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THE   FRENCH    REVOLUTION 

By   HILAIRE   BELLOC 


London 
WILLIAMS   &    NORGATE 


HENRY   HOLT  Sc  Co.,  New  York 
Canada  :  Vv^M.  BRIGGS,  Toronto 


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Editors : 
HERBERT    FISPIER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 

Prof.  GILBERT   MURRAY,  D.LiTT., 
LL.D.,  F.B.A. 

Prof.  J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON,  M..^. 


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NEW   YORK 
HENRY   HOLT   AND   COMPANY 


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THE  FRENCH 
REVOLUTION 


BY 

HILAIRE   (BELLOC,  M.A. 

AUTHOR  OF  "dANTO\,"  "  RODESPIERRr.," 
''MARIE  ANTOINETTE,"  "  THE  OLD  ROAD," 
•'the  PATH  TO  ROME,"  "  PARIS,"  "  THE 
HILLS  AND  THE  SEA,"  "  THE  HISTORIC 
THAMES,  "   ETC,   ETC 


uu 


LONDON 

WILLIAMS  AND   NORGATE 


<£ 


Richard  Clay  &  Sons,  Li>riTKD, 

BUEAD  STUEET  HIIX,    K.C.,    AND 
BUNOAY,   SUFFOLK. 


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GIFT 


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PREFACE 


The  object  of  these  few  pages  is  not  to 
recount  once  more  the  history  of  the  Revolu- 
tion :  that  can  be  followed  in  any  one  of  a 
hundred  text -books.  Their  object  is  rather  to 
lay,  if  that  be  possible,  an  explanation  of 
it  before  the  English  reader  ;  so  that  he 
may  understand  both  what  it  was  and  how 
it  proceeded,  and  also  why  certain  problems 
hitherto  unfamiliar  to  Englishmen  have  risen 
out  of  it. 

First,  therefore,  it  is  necessary  to  set 
down,  clearly  without  modern  accretion,  that 
political  theory  which  was  a  sort  of  religious 
creed,  supplying  the  motive  force  of  the  whole 
business;  of  the  new  Civil  Code  as  of  the 
massacres  ;  of  the  panics  and  capitulations 
as  of  the  victories  ;  of  the  successful  trans- 
formation of  society  as  of  the  conspicuous 
failures  in  detail  which  still  menace  the 
achievement  of  the  Revolution. 

This  grasped,  the  way  in  which  the  main 
events  followed  each  other,  and  the  reason 
of  their  interlocking  and  proceeding  as  they 

ivi^09062 


vi  PREFACE 

did  must  be  put  forward — not,  I  repeat, 
in  the  shape  of  a  chronicle,  but  in  the  shape 
of  a  thesis.  Thus  the  reader  must  know 
not  only  that  the  failure  of  the  royal  family's 
flight  was  followed  by  war,  but  how  and 
why  it  was  followed  by  war.  He  must  not 
only  appreciate  the  severity  of  the  govern- 
ment of  the  great  Committee,  but  why  that 
severity  was  present,  and  of  the  conditions 
of  war  upon  which  it  reposed.  But  in  so 
explaining  the  development  of  the  move- 
ment it  is  necessary  to  select  for  apprecia- 
tion as  the  chief  figures  the  characters  of  the 
time,  since  upon  their  will  and  manner  de- 
pended the  fate  of  the  whole.  For  instance, 
had  the  Queen  been  French  either  in  blood 
or  in  sympathy,  had  the  King  been  alert, 
had  any  one  character  retained  the  old  re- 
ligious motives,  all  liistory  would  have  been 
changed,  and  this  human  company  must  be 
seen  if  its  action  and  drama  are  to  be  com- 
prehended. 

The  reader  interested  in  that  capital  event 
should  further  seize  (and  but  too  rarely 
has  an  opportunity  for  seizing)  its  military 
aspect;  and  this  difficulty  of  his  proceeds 
from  two  causes  :  the  first,  that  historians, 
even  when  they  recognise  the  importance 
of  the  military  side  of  some  past  movement, 
are  careless  of  the  military  aspect,  and  think 


PREFACE  vii 

it  sufficient  to  relate  particular  victories  and 
general  actions.  The  military  aspect  of  any 
period  does  not  consist  in  these,  but  in  the 
campaigns  of  which  actions,  however  decisive, 
are  but  incidental  parts.  In  other  words, 
the  reader  must  seize  the  movement  and 
design  of  armies  if  he  is  to  seize  a  mili- 
tary period,  and  these  are  not  commonly 
given  him.  In  the  second  place,  the  his- 
torian, however  much  alive  to  the  import- 
ance of  military  affairs,  too  rarely  presents 
them  as  part  of  a  general  position.  He  will 
make  his  story  a  story  of  war,  or  again,  a 
story  of  civilian  development,  and  the  reader 
will  fail  to  see  how  the  two  combine. 

Now,  the  Revolution,  more  than  any  other 
modem  period,  turns  upon,  and  is  explained 
by,  its  military  history.  On  this  account  has 
so  considerable  a  space  been  devoted  to  the 
explaining  of  that  feature. 

The  reader  will  note,  again,  that  the  quarrel 
between  the  Revolution  and  the  Catholic 
Church  has  also  been  dealt  with  at  length. 

To  emphasise  this  aspect  of  the  revolution- 
ary struggle  may  seem  unusual  and  perhaps 
deserves  a  word  of  apology. 

The  reader  is  invited  to  consider  the  fact 
that  the  Revolution  took  place  in  a  country 
which  had,  in  the  first  place,  definitely 
determined  during  the  religious  struggle  of 


viii  PREFACE 

the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  to 
remain  in  communion  with  Rome;  and  had, 
in  the  second  place,  admitted  a  very  large  and 
important  body  of  converts  to  the  doctrines 
of  the  Reformation. 

The  determination  of  the  French  people, 
in  the  crisis  of  1572-1610,  to  remain  Catholic 
under  a  strong  central  Government,  was  a 
capital  point  in  the  future  history  of  France. 
So  was  the  presence  of  a  wealthy,  very  large, 
and  highly  cultivated  body  of  dissentients 
in  the  midst  of  the  nation.  The  two  phe- 
nomena hardly  co-existed  elsewhere  in  Europe. 
Between  them  they  lent  to  the  political  history 
of  France  a  peculiar  character  which  the  nine- 
teenth century,  even  more  than  the  Revolution 
itself,  has  emphasised  ;  and  it  is  the  opinion 
of  the  present  writer  that  it  is  impossible  to 
understand  the  Revolution  unless  very  high 
relief  is  given  to  the  religious  problem. 

If  a  personal  point  may  be  noted,  the  fact 
that  the  writer  of  these  pages  is  himself  a 
Catholic  and  in  political  sympathy  strongly 
attached  to  the  political  theory  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, should  not  be  hidden  from  the  reader. 
Such  personal  conditions  have  perhaps  en- 
abled him  to  treat  the  matter  more  thoroughly 
than  it  might  have  been  treated  by  one  who 
rejected  either  Republicanism  upon  the  one 
hand,  or  Catholicism  upon  the  other;  but  he 


PREFACE  ix 

believes  that  no  personal  and  therefore 
exaggerated  note  has  been  allowed  to  intrude 
upon  his  description  of  what  is  a  definite  piece 
of  objective  history  lying  in  the  field  of  record 
rather  than  in  that  of  opinion. 

Some  years  ago  the  paramount  importance 
of  the  quarrel  between  the  Church  and  the 
Revolution  might  still  have  been  questioned 
by  men  who  had  no  personal  experience  of 
the  struggle,  and  of  its  vast  results.  To-day 
the  increasing  consequences  and  the  con- 
temporary violence  of  that  quarrel  make 
its  presentation  an  essential  part  of  any  study 
of  the  period. 

The  scheme  thus  outlined  will  show  why  I 
have  given  this  sketch  the  divisions  in  which 
it  lies. 

H.  Belloc. 

King's  Landy 

January  19  lU 


CONTENTS 


PAOR 


Preface v 

I    The  Political  Theory  of  The  Revolu- 


Q 


TION la 

II      KOUSSEAU 29 

III  The  Characters  op  the  Hevolution  : 

King  Louis  XYI  , 37 

The  Queen    .         ......  45 

Mirabeau 53 

La  Fayette 61 

Diimoiiriez G5 

Danton         . 67 

Carnot 72 

!Marat 74 

Robespierre 77 

IV  The  Phases  of  the  Revolution  : 

i.  From  May  1789  to  17th  of  July  1789         .  83 
ii.  From  the   17th  of  July  1789  to  the  6th 

of  October  1789 93 

iii.  From  October  1789  to  June  1791        .         .  102 

iv.  From  June  1791  to  September  1792           .  108 

V.  From  the  Invasion  of  September  1792  to 

the  Establishment  of  the  Committee  of 

Public  Safety,  April  1793     .         .         .  118 

vi.  From  April  1793  to  July  1794  .          .         .  128 

V    The  Military  Aspkot  of  the  Revolution  142 

One 145 

Two 156 

Three 163 

Four 179 

Five 204 

VI    The     Revolution    and    the     Catholic 

Church 214 

Index 255 

xi 


THE     FRENCH    REVOLUTION 


THE  POLITICAL  THEORY  OF  THE 
REVOLUTION 

The  political  theory  upon  which  the  Revolu- 
tion proceeded  has,  especially  in  this  country, 
suffered  ridicule  as  local,  as  ephemeral,  and  as 
fallacious.  It  is  universal,  it  is  eternal,  and  it 
is  true. 

It  may  be  briefly  stated  thus  :  that  a  politi- 
cal community  pretending  to  sovereignty,  that 
is,  pretending  to  a  moral  right  of  defending 
its  existence  against  all  other  communities, 
derives  the  civil  and  temporal  authority  of  its 
laws  not  from  its  actual  rulers,  nor  even 
from  its  magistracy,  but  from  itself. 

But  the  community  cannot  express  author- 
ity unless  it  possesses  corporate  initiative  ;  that 
is,  unless  the  mass  of  its  component  units  are 
able  to  combine  for  the  purpose  of  a  common 
expression,  are  conscious  of  a  common  will, 
and  have  something  in  common  which  makes 
the  whole  sovereign  indeed. 

It  may  be  that  this  power  of  corporate 
initiative  and  of  corresponding  corporate 
expression  is  forbidden  to  men.     In  that  case 

13 


14       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

no  such  thing  as  a  sovereign  community  can 
be  said  to  exist.  In  that  case  "  patriotism," 
"  public  opinion,"  "  the  genius  of  a  people," 
are  terms  without  meaning.  But  the  human 
race  in  all  times  and  in  all  places  has  agreed 
that  such  terms  have  meaning,  and  the  con- 
ception that  a  community  can  so  live,  order 
and  be  itself,  is  a  human  conception  as  con- 
sonant to  the  nature  of  man  as  is  his  sense  of 
right  and  wrong;  it  is  much  more  intimately 
a  part  of  that  nature  than  are  the  common 
accidents  determining  human  life,  such  as 
nourishment,  generation  or  repose  :  nay,  more 
intimate  a  part  of  it  than  anything  which 
attaches  to  the  body. 

This  theory  of  political  morals,  though 
subject  to  a  limitless  degradation  in  practice, 
underlies  the  argument  of  every  man  who 
pretends  to  regard  the  conduct  of  the  State  as 
a  business  affecting  the  conscience  of  citizens. 
Upon  it  relies  every  protest  against  tyranny 
and  every  denunciation  of  foreign  aggression. 

He  that  is  most  enamoured  of  some  set 
machinery  for  the  government  of  men,  and 
who  regards  the  sacramental  function  of  an 
hereditary  monarch  (as  in  Russia),  the  organic 
character  of  a  native  oligarchy  (as  in  England), 
the  mechanical  arrangement  of  election  by 
majorities,  or  even  in  a  crisis  the  intense  con- 
viction and  therefore  the  intense  activity  and 
conclusive  power  of  great  crowds  as  salutary 
to  the  State,  will  invariably,  if  any  one  of  these 
engines  fail  him  in  the  achievement  of  what  he 
desires  for  his  country,  fall  back  upon  the 
doctrine    of    an    ultimately    sovereign    com- 


THE   POLITICAL   THEORY         15 

munity.  He  will  complain  that  though  an 
election  has  defeated  his  ideal,  yet  true  national 
tradition  and  true  national  sentiment  were 
upon  his  side.  If  he  defends  the  action  of 
a  native  oligarchy  against  the  leaders  of  the 
populace,  he  does  so  by  an  explanation 
(more  or  less  explicit)  that  the  oligarchy  is 
more  truly  national,  that  is  more  truly  com- 
munal, than  the  engineered  expression  of 
opinion  of  which  the  demagogues  (as  he  will 
call  them)  have  been  the  mouthpieces.  Even 
in  blaming  men  for  criticising  or  restraining 
an  hereditary  monarch  the  adherent  of  that 
monarch  will  blame  them  upon  the  ground 
that  their  action  is  anti-national,  that  is  anti- 
communal;  and,  in  a  word,  no  man  pretending 
to  sanity  can  challenge  in  matters  temporal 
and  civil  the  ultimate  authority  of  whatever 
is  felt  to  be  (though  with  what  difficulty  is  it 
not  defined  !)  the  general  civic  sense  which 
builds  up  a  State. 

Those  words  "  civil  "  and  "  temporal " 
must  lead  the  reader  to  the  next  considera- 
tion; which  is,  that  the  last  authority  of  all 
does  not  reside  even  in  the  community. 

It  must  be  admitted  by  all  those  who  have 
considered  their  own  nature  and  that  of  their 
fellow  beings  that  the  ultimate  authority  in 
any  act  is  God.  Or  if  the  name  of  God  sound 
unusual  in  an  English  publication  to-day, 
then  what  now  takes  the  place  of  it  for  many 
(an  imperfect  phrase),  "  the  moral  sense.'* 

Thus  if  there  be  cast  together  in  some  aban- 
doned place  a  community  of  a  few  families 
so  depraved  or  so  necessitous  that,  against  the 


18      THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

teachings  of  their  own  consciences,  and  well 
knowing  that  what  they  are  doing  is  what  we 
call  wrong,  yet  they  will  unanimously  agree  to 
do  it,  then  that  agreement  of  theirs,  though 
certainly  no  temporal  or  civil  authority  can 
be  quoted  against  it,  is  yet  unjustifiable. 
Another  authority  lies  behind.  Still  more 
evidently  would  this  be  true  if,  of  say,  twelve, 
seven  decided  (knowing  the  thing  to  be  wrong) 
that  the  wrong  thing  should  be  done,  five 
stood  out  for  the  right — and  yet  the  majority 
possessed  by  the  seven  should  be  deter- 
mined a  sufficient  authority  for  the  wrongful 
command. 

But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  this  axiom  onlv 
applies  where  the  authority  of  the  moral  law 
(God,  as  the  author  of  this  book,  with  due 
deference  to  his  readers,  would  prefer  to  say) 
is  recognised  and  yet  flouted.  If  those  twelve 
families  do  sincerely  believe  such  and  such  a 
general  action  to  be  right,  then  not  only  is 
their  authority  when  they  carry  it  into  prac- 
tice a  civil  and  a  temporal  authority;  it  is  an 
authority  absolute  in  all  respects ;  and  further, 
if,  upon  a  division  of  opinion  among  them  not 
perhaps  a  bare  majority,  nay,  perhaps  not  a 
majority  at  all,  but  at  any  rate  a  determinant 
current  of  opinion — determinant  in  intensity 
and  in  weight,  that  is,  as  well  as  in  numbers — 
declares  an  action  to  be  right,  then  that  de- 
terminant weight  of  opinion  gives  to  its  resolve 
a  political  authority  not  only  civil  and  tem- 
poral but  absolute.  Beyond  it  and  above  it 
there  is  no  appeal. 

In  other  words,  men  may  justly  condemn. 


THE,  POLITICAL  THEORY         17 

and  justly  have  in  a  thousand  circumstances 
condemned,  the  theory  that  a  mere  decision 
on  the  major  part  of  the  community  was 
necessarily  right  in  morals.  It  is,  for  that 
matter,  self-evident  that  if  one  community 
decides  in  one  fashion,  another,  also  sovereign, 
in  the  opposite  fashion,  both  cannot  be  right. 
Reasoning  men  have  also  protested,  and  justly, 
against  the  conception  that  what  a  majority 
in  numbers,  or  even  (what  is  more  compelling 
still)  a  unanimity  of  decision  in  a  community 
may  order,  may  not  only  be  wrong  but  may 
be  something  which  that  community  has  no 
authority  to  order  since,  though  it  possesses 
a  civil  and  temporal  authority,  it  acts  against 
that  ultimate  authority  which  is  its  own  con- 
sciousness of  right.  Men  may  and  do  justly 
protest  against  the  doctrine  that  a  community 
is  incapable  of  doing  deliberate  evil  ;  it  is  as 
capable  of  such  an  action  as  is  an  individual. 
But  men  nowhere  do  or  can  deny  that  the 
community  acting  as  it  thinks  right  is  ulti- 
mately sovereign :  there  is  no  alternative  to 
so  plain  a  truth. 

Let  us  take  it,  then,  as  indubitable  that  where 
civil  government  is  concerned,  the  community 
is  supreme,  if  only  from  the  argument  that  no 
organ  within  the  community  can  prove  its 
right  to  withstand  the  corporate  will  when 
once  that  corporate  will  shall  find  expression. 

All  arguments  which  are  advanced  against 
this  prime  axiom  of  political  ethics  are,  when 
they  are  analysed,  found  to  repose  upon  a 
confusion  of  thought.  Thus  a  man  will  say, 
"  This   doctrine  would  lead  my  country  to 


18       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

abandon  her  suzerainty  over  that  other  nation, 
but  were  I  to  consent  to  this,  I  should  be 
weakening  my  country,  to  which  I  owe  allegi- 
ance.*' The  doctrine  compels  him  to  no  such 
muddlement.  The  community  of  which  he 
is  a  member  is  free  to  make  its  dispositions 
for  safety,  and  is  bound  to  preserve  its  own 
life.  It  is  for  the  oppressed  to  protest  and  to 
rebel. 

Similarly,  men  think  that  this  doctrine  in 
some  way  jars  with  the  actual  lethargy  and 
actual  imbecility  of  men  in  their  corporate 
action.  It  does  nothing  of  the  kind.  This 
lethargy,  that  imbecility,  and  all  the  other 
things  that  limit  the  application  of  the 
doctrine,  in  no  way  touch  its  right  reason,  any 
more  than  the  fact  that  the  speech  of  all  men 
is  imperfect  contradicts  the  principle  that 
man  has  a  moral  right  to  self-expression. 
That  a  dumb  man  cannot  speak  at  all,  but  must 
write,  is,  so  far  from  a  contradiction,  a  proof 
of  the  truth  that  speech  is  the  prime  expression 
of  man  ;  and  in  the  same  way  a  community 
utterly  without  the  power  of  expressing  its 
corporate  will  is  no  contradiction,  but  a  proof, 
of  the  general  rule  that  such  expression  and 
the  imposing  of  such  decisions  are  normal  to 
mankind.  The  very  oddity  of  the  contrast 
between  the  abnormal  and  the  normal  aids  us 
in  our  decision,  and  when  we  see  a  people 
conquered  and  not  persuaded,  yet  making  no 
attempt  at  rebellion,  or  a  people  free  from 
foreign  oppression  yet  bewildered  at  the 
prospect  of  self-government,  the  oddity  of 
the  phenomenon  proves  our  rule. 


THE   POLITICAL  THEORY         19 

But  though  all  this  be  true,  there  stands 
against  the  statement  of  our  political  axiom  not 
a  contradiction  added,  but  a  criticism;  and  all 
men  with  some  knowledge  of  their  fellows  and 
of  themselves  at  once  perceive,  iirsU  that  the 
psychology  of  corporate  action  differs  essenti- 
ally from  the  psychology  of  individual  action, 
and  secondly,  that  in  proportion  to  the  num- 
ber, the  discussions,  the  lack  of  intimacy,  and 
in  general  the  friction  of  the  many,  corporate 
action  by  a  community,  corporate  self-realisa- 
tion and  the  imposition  of  a  corporate  will, 
varies  from  the  difficult  to  the  impossible. 

On  this  no  words  need  be  wasted.  All  men 
who  reason  and  who  observe  are  agreed  that, 
in  proportion  to  distance,  numbers,  and  com- 
plexity, the  difficulty  of  self-expression  within 
a  community  increases.  We  may  get  in  a 
lively  people  explosions  of  popular  will  violent, 
acute,  and  certainly  real;  but  rare.  We  may 
attempt  with  a  people  more  lethargic  to  obtain 
some  reflection  of  popular  will  through  the 
medium  of  a  permanent  machinery  of  de- 
putation which,  less  than  any  other,  perhaps, 
permits  a  great  community  to  express  itself 
truly.  We  may  rely  upon  the  national  sym- 
pathies of  an  aristocracy  or  of  a  king.  But 
in  any  case  we  know  that  large  communities 
can  only  indirectly  and  imperfectly  express 
themselves  where  the  permanent  government 
of  their  whole  interest  is  concerned.  Our 
attachment,  which  may  be  passionate,  to  the 
rights  of  the  Common  Will  we  must  satisfy 
either  by  demanding  a  loose  federation  of  small, 
self-governing  states,  or  submitting  the  central 


20       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

government  of  large  ones  to  occasional  insur- 
rection and  to  violent  corporate  expressions 
of  opinion  which  shall  readjust  the  relations 
between  the  governor  and  the  governed. 

All  this  is  true  :  but  such  a  criticism  of  the 
theory  in  political  morals  which  lay  behind  the 
Revolution,  the  theory  that  the  community 
is  sovereign,  is  no  contradiction.  It  only  tells 
us  that  pure  right  cannot  act  untrammelled 
in  human  affairs  and  that  it  acts  in  some 
conditions  more  laboriously  than  in  others  : 
it  gives  not  a  jot  of  authority  to  any  alter- 
native thesis.^ 

Such  is  the  general  theory  of  the  Revolution 
to  which  the  command  of  Jean  Jacques  Rous- 
seau over  the  French  tongue  gave  imperishable 

^  We  need  not  waste  any  time  upon  those  wlio  talk 
about  such  and  such  a  form  of  government  being  good 
because  ^^it  works."  The  use  of  such  language  connotes 
that  the  user  of  it  is  fatigued  by  the  effort  of  thought. 
For  what  is  ^^  working,"  i.  e.  successful  action,  in  any 
spliere  ?  The  attainment  of  certain  ends  in  that  sphere. 
What  are  those  ends  in  a  State  ?  If  material  well-being, 
then  there  is  an  end  to  talk  of  patriotism,  the  nation, 
public  opinion  and  the  rest  of  it  which,  as  we  all  very  well 
know,  men  always  have  regarded  and  always  ^^■ill  regard 
as  the  supreme  matters  of  public  interest.  If  the  end  is 
not  material  well-being,  but  a  sense  of  political  freedom 
and  of  the  power  of  the  citizen  to  react  upon  the  State, 
then  to  say  that  an  institution  '^  works  "  though  apparently 
not  democratic,  is  simply  to  say  that  under  such  and  such 
conditions  that  institution  achieves  the  ends  of  democracy 
most  nearly.  In  other  words,  to  contrast  the  good 
^^ working"  of  an  institution  superficially  undemocratic 
with  democratic  theory  is  meaningless.  The  institution 
"  works "  in  proportion  as  it  satisfies  that  political  sense 
which  perfect  democracy  would,  were  it  attainable^  com- 
pletely satisfy. 


THE  POLITICAL  THEORY         21 

expression  in  that  book  whose  style  and  logical 
connection  may  be  compared  to  some  exact 
and  strong  piece  of  engineering.  He  entitled  it 
the  Contrat  Social,  and  it  became  the  formula  of 
the  Revolutionary  Creed.  But  though  no  man, 
perhaps,  has  put  the  prime  truth  of  political 
morals  so  well,  that  truth  was  as  old  as  the 
world;  it  appears  in  the  passionate  rhetoric  of 
a  hundred  leaders  and  has  stood  at  the  head  or 
has  been  woven  into  the  laws  of  free  States 
without  number.  In  the  English  language 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  perhaps 
its  noblest  expression.  And  though  this 
document  was  posterior  to  the  great  work  of 
Rousseau  and  (through  the  genius  of  Jefferson) 
was  in  some  part  descended  from  it,  its  lan- 
guage, and  still  more  the  actions  of  those  who 
drafted  and  supported  it,  are  sufficient  to 
explain  what  I  mean  to  English  readers. 

Now  with  this  general  theory  there  stand 
connected  on  the  one  hand  certain  great 
principles  without  which  it  would  have  no 
meaning,  and  also  on  the  other  hand  a  number 
of  minor  points  concerning  no  more  than  the 
machinery  of  politics.  The  first  are  vital  to 
democracy.  The  second,  in  spite  of  their  great 
popularity  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  and 
of  the  sanction  which  the  Revolution  gave 
them,  nay,  of  their  universality  since  the 
Revolution,  have  in  reality  nothing  to  do  with 
the  revolutionary  theory  itself. 

Of  these  two  categories  the  type  of  the 
first  is  the  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  man; 
the  type  of  the  second  is  the  mere  machinery 
called  ''  representative." 


22       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  the  man  is 
a  transcendent  doctrine:  a  *' dogma,"  as  we 
call  such  doctrines  in  the  field  of  transcendental 
religion.  It  corresponds  to  no  physical  reality 
which  we  can  grasp,  it  is  hardly  to  be  adum- 
brated even  by  metaphors  drawn  from  physical 
objects.  We  may  attempt  to  rationalise  it 
by  saying  that  what  is  common  to  all  men  is 
not  more  important  but  infinitely  more  im- 
portant than  the  accidents  by  which  men 
differ.  We  may  compare  human  attributes 
to  tri-dimensional,  and  personal  attributes  to 
bi-dimensional  measurements  ;  we  may  say 
that  whatever  man  has  of  his  nature  is  the 
standard  of  man,  and  we  may  show  that  in  all 
such  things  men  are  potentially  equal.  None  of 
these  metaphors  explains  the  matter;  still  less 
do  any  of  them  satisfy  the  demand  of  those  to 
whom  the  dogma  may  be  incomprehensible. 

Its  truth  is  to  be  arrived  at  (for  these)  in  a 
negative  manner.  If  men  are  not  equal  then 
no  scheme  of  jurisprudence,  no  act  of  justice, 
no  movement  of  human  indignation,  no  ex- 
altation of  fellowship,  has  any  meaning.  The 
doctrine  of  the  equality  of  man  is  one  which, 
like  many  of  the  great  transcendental  doctrines, 
may  be  proved  by  the  results  consequent  upon 
its  absence.  It  is  in  man  to  believe  it — and 
all  lively  societies  believe  it. 

It  is  certainly  not  in  man  to  prove  the 
equality  of  men  save,  as  I  have  said,  by 
negation;  but  it  demands  no  considerable  in- 
tellectual faculty  to  perceive  that,  void  of 
the  doctrine  of  equality,  the  conception  of 
political  freedom  and  of  a  community's  moral 


THE   POLITICAL   THEORY         23 

right  to  self-government  disappear.  Now  to 
believe  that  doctrine  positively,  and  to  believe 
it  ardently,  to  go  on  crusade  for  that  religious 
point,  was  indeed  characteristic  of  the  French. 
It  required  the  peculiar  and  inherited  religious 
temper  of  the  French  which  had  for  so  many 
hundred  years  seized  and  defined  point  after 
point  in  the  character  of  man,  to  grow  en- 
amoured of  this  definition  and  to  feel  it  not 
in  the  intellect,  but  as  it  were  in  their  bones. 
They  became  soldiers  for  it,  and  that  enormous 
march  of  theirs,  overrunning  Europe,  which 
may  not  inaptly  be  compared  to  their  ad- 
ventures in  the  twelfth  century,  when  they 
engaged  upon  the  Crusades,  was  inspired  by 
no  one  part  of  the  doctrine  of  political  free- 
dom more  strongly  than  by  this  doctrine  of 
equality. 

The  scorn  which  was  in  those  days  univers- 
ally felt  for  that  pride  which  associates  itself 
with  things  not  inherent  to  a  man  (notably 
and  most  absurdly  with  capricious  differences 
of  wealth)  never  ran  higher;  and  the  passionate 
sense  of  justice  which  springs  from  this  pro- 
found and  fundamental  social  dogma  of 
equality,  as  it  moved  France  during  the 
Revolution  to  frenzy,  so  also  moved  it  to 
creation. 

Those  who  ask  how  it  was  that  a  group  of 
men  sustaining  all  the  weight  of  civil  conflict 
within  and  of  universal  war  without,  yet  made 
time  enough  in  twenty  years  to  frame  the  codes 
which  govern  modern  Europe,  to  lay  down 
the  foundations  of  universal  education,  of  a 
strictly  impersonal  scheme  of  administration, 


24       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

and  even  in  detail  to  remodel  the  material  face 
of  society — in  a  word,  to  make  modem  Europe 
— must  be  content  for  their  reply  to  learn 
that  the  Republican  Energy  had  for  its  flame 
and  excitant  this  vision :  a  sense  almost 
physical  of  the  equality  of  man. 

The  minor  points  which  wove  themselves 
into  the  political  practice  of  democracy  during 
the  Revolution,  which  are  not  of  its  prin- 
ciples, and  which  would  not,  were  they  ab- 
stracted, affect  its  essence,  are  of  quite  another 
and  less  noble  kind.  I  have  taken  as  the 
chief  of  these  the  machinery  of  deputation  or 
of  "  representation." 

The  representative  system  had  been  designed 
for  a  particular  purpose  under  the  influence 
of  the  Church  and  especially  of  the  monastic 
orders  (who  invented  it)  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  had  been  practised  as  a  useful  check  upon 
the  national  monarchy  in  France,  and  as  a 
useful  form  of  national  expression  in  times 
of  crisis  or  when  national  initiative  was 
peculiarly  demanded. 

In  Spain  it  became,  as  the  Middle  Ages 
proceeded,  a  very  vital  national  and  local 
thing,  varying  from  place  to  place.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  Spain  (seeing  that  in  her 
territory  the  first  experiments  in  represen- 
tation were  made)  should  have  thus  preserved 
it,  popular  and  alive. 

In  England  Representation,  vigorous  as 
everywhere  else  in  the  true  Middle  Ages, 
narrowed  and  decayed  at  their  close,  until 
in  the  seventeenth  century  it  had  become 
a  mere  scheme  for  aristocratic  government. 


THE  POLITICAL  THEORY         25 

In  France  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  be- 
fore the  Revolution  it  had  fallen  into  disuse, 
but  an  active  memory  of  it  still  remained; 
especially  a  memory  of  its  value  in  critical 
moments  when  a  consultation  of  the  whole 
people  was  required,  and  when  the  corporate 
initiative  of  the  whole  people  must  be  set  at 
work  in  order  to  save  the  State. 

It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  French, 
on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution,  clamoured  for 
a  revival  of  representation,  or,  as  the  system 
was  called  in  the  French  tongue,  "the  States- 
General."  But  as  a  permanent  machine  of 
government  no  one  in  Europe  had  the  least 
idea  how  the  system  might  serve  the  ends  of 
democracy.  In  England  democracy  was  not 
practised  nor  was  representation  connected 
with  the  conception  of  it.  The  nation  had 
forgotten  democracy  as  completely  as  it  had 
forgotten  the  religion  and  the  old  ideals  of  the 
Middle  Ages. 

In  those  parts  of  Christendom  in  which  this 
ancient  Christian  institution  of  a  parliament 
had  not  narrowed  to  be  the  mask  of  an  oli- 
garchy or  dwindled  to  be  a  mere  provincial 
custom,  its  use  had  disappeared.  The  ancient 
function  of  Representation,  when  it  had  been 
most  lively  and  vigorous,  that  is,  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  was  occasionally  to  initiate  a 
national  policy  in  critical  moments,  but  more 
generally  to  grant  taxes.  What  a  democratic 
parliament  might  do,  no  one  in  1789  could 
conceive. 

There  was  indeed  one  great  example  of 
democratic  representation  in  existence ;   the 


26       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

example  of  the  United  States;  but  the  condi- 
tions were  wholly  different  from  those  of 
Europe.  No  true  central  power  yet  existed 
there ;  no  ancient  central  institution,  no 
Crown  nor  any  Custom  of  the  City.  The 
numbers  over  which  American  representative 
democracy  then  held  power  were  not  to  be 
compared  to  the  twenty-five  millions  who 
inhabited  the  French  realm.  And  even  so, 
most  of  what  counted  in  their  lives  was  regu- 
lated by  a  system  of  highly  local  autonomy : 
for  they  were  as  scattered  as  they  were  few, 
and  the  wisest  and  strongest  and  best  were 
dependent  upon  slaves.  In  Europe,  I  repeat, 
the  experiment  was  untried;  and  it  is  one  of 
the  chief  faults  of  the  French  revolutionaries 
that,  having  been  compelled  in  the  critical 
moment  of  the  opening  of  the  Revolution  to 
the  use  of  election  and  representation,  they 
envisaged  the  permanent  use  of  a  similar 
machinery  as  a  something  sacred  to  and 
normal  in  the  democratic  State. 

True,  they  could  not  foresee  modem  parlia- 
mentarism. Nothing  could  be  more  alien  to 
their  conception  of  the  State  than  the  de- 
plorable method  of  government  which  parlia- 
mentarism everywhere  tends  to  introduce 
to-day. 

True,  the  French  people  during  the  revolu- 
tionary wars  made  short  work  of  parliamentary 
theory,  and  found  it  a  more  national  thing  to 
follow  a  soldier  (being  by  that  time  all  soldiers 
themselves),  and  to  incarnate  in  a  dictator  the 
will  of  the  nation. 

But    though    the    French    revolutionaries 


THE  POLITICAL  THEORY         27 

could  not  have  foreseen  what  we  call 
*'  Parliamentarism  "  to-day,  and  though  the 
society  from  which  they  sprang  made  shoii: 
work  of  the  oligarchic  pretensions  of  a 
parliament  when  the  realities  of  the  national 
struggle  had  to  be  considered,  yet  they  did  as 
a  fact  pay  an  almost  absurd  reverence  to  the 
machinery  of  representation  and  election. 

They  went  so  far  as  to  introduce  it  into  their 
attempted  reform  of  the  Church;  they  intro- 
duced it  everywhere  into  civil  government, 
from  the  smallest  units  to  the  highest.  They 
even  for  a  moment  played  with  the  illusion 
in  that  most  real  of  games  which  men  can 
ever  play  at — the  business  of  arms :  they 
allowed  the  election  of  officers.  They  were 
led  to  do  this  by  that  common  fallacy, 
more  excusable  in  them  than  in  us,  which 
confounds  the  individual  will  with  the  cor- 
porate. A  representative  (they  thought)  could 
in  some  way  be  the  permanent  receptacle  of 
his  electorate.  They  imagined  that  corporate 
initiative  was  always  sufficiently  active,  in  no 
matter  what  divisions  or  subdivisions,  to  react 
at  once  upon  the  delegate,  to  guide  him  as  may 
be  guided  a  driven  animal,  or  to  command 
him  as  may  be  commanded  a  servant. 

It  was  in  vain  that  Rousseau,  the  great 
exponent  of  the  democratic  theory  upon 
which  France  attempted  to  proceed,  had 
warned  posterity  against  the  possible  results 
of  the  representative  system:  they  fell  into 
the  error,  and  it  possesses  many  of  their 
descendants  to  this  day. 

Rousseau's  searching  mind  perceived  indeed 


28       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

no  more  than  the  general  truth  that  men  who 
consent  to  a  representative  system  are  free 
only  while  the  representatives  are  not  sitting. 
But  (as  is  so  often  the  case  with  intuitions  of 
genius)  though  he  saw  not  the  whole  of  the  evil, 
he  had  put  his  finger  upon  its  central  spot, 
and  from  that  main  and  just  principle  which 
he  laid  down — that  under  a  merely  repre- 
sentative system  men  cannot  be  really  free — 
flow  all  those  evils  which  we  now  know  to 
attach  to  this  method  of  government.  What 
a  rather  clumsy  epigram  has  called  "  the 
audacity  of  elected  persons  "  is  part  of  this 
truth.  The  evident  spectacle  of  modern 
parliamentary  nations  driven  against  their  will 
into  economic  conditions  which  appal  them, 
proceeds  again  from  the  same  truth ;  the  con- 
spicuous and  hearty  contempt  into  which 
parliamentary  institutions  have  everywhere 
fallen  again  proceeds  from  it,  and  there  pro- 
ceeds from  it  that  further  derivative  plague 
that  the  representatives  themselves  have  now 
everywhere  become  more  servile  than  the 
electorate  and  that  in  all  parliamentary 
countries  a  few  intriguers  are  the  unworthy 
depositories  of  power,  and  by  their  service 
of  finance  permit  the  money-dealers  to 
govern  us  all  to-day.  Rousseau,  I  say,  the 
chief  prophet  of  the  Revolution,  had  warned 
the  French  of  this  danger.  It  is  a  capital 
example  of  his  talent,  for  the  experiment  of 
democratic  representation  had  not  yet,  in  his 
time,  been  tried.  But  much  more  is  that 
power  of  his  by  which  he  not  only  stamped 
and  issued  the  gold  of  democracy  as  it  had 


ROUSSEAU  29 

never  till  then  been  minted.  No  one  man 
makes  a  people  or  their  creed,  but  Rousseau 
more  than  any  other  man  made  vocal  the 
creed  of  a  people,  and  it  is  advisable  or 
necessary  for  the  reader  of  the  Revolution 
to  consider  at  the  outset  of  his  reading  of 
what  nature  was  Rousseau's  abundant  in- 
fluence upon  the  men  who  remodelled  the 
society  of  Europe  between  1789  and  1794. 

Why  did  he  dominate  those  five  years,  and 
how  was  it  that  he  dominated  them  in- 
creasingly ? 

An  explanation  of  Rousseau's  power  merits 
a  particular  digression,  for  few  who  express 
themselves  in  the  English  tongue  have  cared 
to  understand  it,  and  in  the  academies  pro- 
vincial men  have  been  content  to  deal  with 
this  great  writer  as  though  he  were  in  some 
way  inferior  to  themselves. 


II 

ROUSSEAU 

In  order  to  appreciate  what  Rousseau 
meant  to  the  revolutionary  movement,  it  is 
necessary  to  consider  the  effect  of  style  upon 
men. 

Men  are  influenced  by  the  word.  Spoken 
or  written,  the  word  is  the  organ  of  persuasion 
and,  therefore,  of  moral  government. 

Now,  degraded  as  that  term  has  become  in 
our  time,  there  is  no  proper  term  to  express 
the  exact  use  of  words  save  the  term  "  style.'' 


so      THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

What  words  we  use,  and  in  what  order  we 
put  them,  is  the  whole  matter  of  style;  and  a 
man  desiring  to  influence  his  fellow  men  has 
therefore  not  one,  but  two  co-related  instru- 
ments at  his  disposal.  He  cannot  use  one 
without  the  other.  The  weakness  of  the  one 
will  ruin  the  other.  These  two  instnunents 
are  his  idea  and  his  style. 

However  powerful,  native,  sympathetic  to 
his  hearers'  mood  or  cogently  provable  by 
reference  to  new  things  may  be  a  man's 
idea,  he  cannot  persuade  his  fellow  men  to 
it  iif  he  have  not  words  that  express  it. 
And  he  will  persuade  them  more  and  more 
in  proportion  as  his  words  are  well  chosen  and 
in  the  right  order,  such  order  being  deter- 
mined by  the  genius  of  the  language  whence 
they  are  drawn. 

Whether  the  idea  of  which  Rousseau  made 
himself  the  exponent  in  his  famous  tract  be  true 
or  false,  need  not  further  concern  us  in  this 
little  book.  We  all  know  that  the  difficult  at- 
tempt to  realise  political  freedom  has  attracted 
various  communities  of  men  at  various  times 
and  repelled  others.  What  English  readers 
rarely  hear  is  that  the  triumph  of  Rousseau 
depended  not  only  on  the  first  element  in 
persuasion,  which  is  vision,  but  also  upon  the 
second  of  the  two  co-related  instruments  by 
which  a  man  may  influence  his  fellows — ^to 
wit,  style.  It  was  his  choice  of  French  words 
and  the  order  in  which  he  arranged  them, 
that  gave  him  his  enormous  ascendancy  over 
the  generation  which  was  young  when  he  was 
old. 


ROUSSEAU  31 

I  have  alluded  to  his  famous  tract,  the 
Contrat  Social,  and  here  a  second  point  con- 
cerning it  may  be  introduced.  This  book 
which  gave  a  text  for  the  Revolution,  the 
document  to  which  its  political  theory  could 
refer,  was  by  no  means  (as  foreign  observers 
have  sometimes  imagined)  the  whole  body  of 
writing  for  which  Rousseau  was  responsible. 
To  imagine  that  is  to  make  the  very  common 
error  of  confusing  a  man  with  his  books. 

Rousseau  wrote  on  many  things  :  his 
character  was  of  an  exalted,  nervous  and 
diseased  sort.  Its  excessive  sensibility  de- 
generated with  advancing  years  into  something 
not  distinguishable  from  mania.  He  wrote 
upon  education,  and  the  glory  of  his  style 
carried  conviction  both  where  he  was  right 
and  where  the  short  experience  of  a  hundred 
years  has  proved  him  to  have  been  wholly 
wrong.  He  wrote  upon  love,  and  half  the 
lessons  to  be  drawn  from  his  writing  will  be 
condemned  by  the  sane.  He  wrote  upon 
botany  at  vast  length;  he  wrote  also  upon 
music — with  what  success  in  either  depart- 
ment I  am  incompetent  to  determine.  He 
wrote  upon  human  inequality :  and  though  the 
sentences  were  beautiful  and  the  sentiment 
just,  the  analysis  was  very  insufficient  and 
the  historical  conception  bad.  He  wrote 
upon  a  project  for  perpetual  peace,  which 
was  rubbish;  and  he  wrote  upon  the  govern- 
ment of  Poland  an  essay  which  was  a  perfect 
masterpiece. 

But  when  a  great  writer  writes,  each  of  his 
great  writings  has  a  life  of  its  own,  and  it  was 


82       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

not  any  of  these  other  writings  of  Rousseau, 
on  love  or  botany,  which  were  the  text  of  the 
Revolution.  The  text  of  the  Revolution  was 
his  Contrat  Social. 

Now  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  never 
in  the  history  of  political  theory  has  a  political 
theory  been  put  forward  so  lucidly,  so  con- 
vincingly, so  tersely  or  so  accurately  as  in 
this  short  and  wonderful  book.  The  modern 
publisher  in  this  country  would  be  ashamed 
to  print  it :  not  for  its  views  (which  would 
now  seem  commonplace),  nor  for  its  excellence, 
which  would  ensure  it  a  failure,  but  for  its 
brevity.  It  is  as  short  as  a  gospel,  and  would 
cover  but  a  hundred  pages  of  one  of  our 
serious  reviews.  A  modern  publisher  in  this 
city  would  not  know  what  price  to  set  upon 
such  a  work,  and  the  modern  reader  in  this 
country  would  be  puzzled  to  understand  how 
a  great  thing  could  be  got  within  so  narrow 
a  compass.  A  debate  in  Parliament  or  the 
libretto  of  a  long  pantomime  is  of  greater 
volume. 

Nevertheless,  if  it  be  closely  read  the  Contrat 
Social  will  be  discovered  to  say  all  that  can  be 
said  of  the  moral  basis  of  democracy.  Our 
isfnorance  of  the  historical  basis  of  the  State 
is  presumed  in  the  very  openmg  Imes  of  it. 
The  logical  priority  of  the  family  to  the  State 
is  the  next  statement.  The  ridiculous  and 
shameful  argument  that  strength  is  the  basis 
of  authority — which  has  never  had  standing 
save  among  the  uninstructed  or  the  super- 
ficial— is  contemptuously  dismissed  in  a  very 
simple  proof  which  forms  the  third  chapter, 


ROUSSEAU  33 

and  that  chapter  is  not  a  page  of  a  book  in 
length.  It  is  with  the  fifth  chapter  that  the 
powerful  argument  begins,  and  the  logical 
precedence  of  human  association  to  any 
particular  form  of  government  is  the  founda- 
tion stone  of  that  analysis.  It  is  this  indeed 
which  gives  its  title  to  the  book  :  the  moral 
authority  of  men  in  community  arises  from 
conscious  association ;  or,  as  an  exact  phrase- 
ology would  have  it,  a  "  social  contract." 
All  the  business  of  democracy  as  based  upon 
the  only  moral  authority  in  a  State  follows 
from  this  first  principle,  and  is  developed  in 
Rousseau's  extraordinary  achievement  which, 
much  more  than  any  other  writing  not  reli- 
gious, has  affected  the  destiny  of  mankind. 

It  is  indeed  astonishing  to  one  who  is  well 
acquainted  not  only  with  the  matter,  but  with 
the  manner  of  the  Contrat  Social,  to  remark 
what  criticisms  have  been  passed  upon  it  by 
those  who  either  have  not  read  the  work  or, 
having  read  it,  did  so  with  an  imperfect  know- 
ledge of  the  meaning  of  French  words.  The 
two  great  counter  arguments,  the  one  theoretic 
the  other  practical,  which  democracy  has  to 
meet,  stand  luminously  exposed  in  these 
pages,  though  in  so  short  a  treatise  the  author 
might  have  been  excused  from  considering 
them.  The  theoretical  argument  against  de- 
mocracy is,  of  course,  that  man  being  prone  to 
evil,  something  external  to  him  and  indifferent 
to  his  passions  must  be  put  up  to  govern 
him;  the  people  will  corrupt  themselves,  but  a 
despot  or  an  oligarchy,  when  it  has  satisfied 
its  corrupt  desires,  still  has  a  wide  margin 

B 


34       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

over  which  it  may  rule  well  because  it  is 
indifferent.  You  cannot  bribe  the  despot  or 
the  oligarch  beyond  the  limit  of  his  desires, 
but  a  whole  people  can  follow  its  own  corrupt 
desires  to  the  full,  and  they  will  infect  all 
government. 

The  full  practice  of  democracy,  therefore, 
says  Rousseau,  is  better  suited  to  angels  than 
to  men. 

As  to  the  practical  argument  that  men 
are  not  sufficiently  conscious  of  the  State  to 
practise  democracy,  save  in  small  communities, 
that  plea  also  is  recognised  and  stated  better 
than  any  one  else  has  stated  it.  For  there  is 
not  in  this  book  an  apology  for  democracy  as 
a  method  of  government,  but  a  statement  ol 
why  and  how  democracy  is  right. 

The  silly  confusion  which  regards  a  repre- 
sentative method  as  essentially  democratic 
has  never  been  more  contemptuously  dealt 
with,  nor  more  thoroughly,  than  in  the  few 
words  in  which  the  Contrat  Social  dismisses  it 
for  ever;  though  it  was  left  to  our  own  time 
to  discover,  in  the  school  of  unpleasant 
experience,  how  right  was  Rousseau  in  this 
particular  condemnation. 

Exiguous  as  are  the  limits  within  which 
the  great  writer  has  finally  decided  the  theory 
of  democracy,  he  finds  space  for  side  issues 
which  nowhere  else  but  in  this  book  had 
been  orderly  considered,  and  which,  when 
once  one  has  heard  them  mentioned,  one  sees 
to  be  of  the  most  excellent  wisdom  :  that  the 
fundamental  laws,  or  original  and  particular 
bonds,  of  a  new  democracy  must  come  from  a 


ROUSSEAU  35 

source  external  to  itself;  that  to  the  nature 
of  the  people  for  whom  one  is  legislating, 
however  democratic  the  form  of  the  State, 
we  must  conform  the  particulars  of  law;  that 
a  democracy  cannot  live  without  "  tribunes  "; 
that  no  utterly  inflexible  law  can  be  permitted 
in  the  State — and  hence  the  necessity  for  dic- 
tatorship in  exceptional  times;  that  no  code 
can  foresee  future  details — and  so  forth. 

It  would  be  a  legitimate  and  entertaining 
task  to  challenge  any  man  who  had  not  read 
the  Contrat  Social  (and  this  would  include 
most  academic  writers  upon  the  treatise)  to 
challenge  any  such  one,  I  say,  to  put  down 
an  argument  against  democratic  theory  which 
could  not  be  found  within  those  few  pages,  or 
to  suggest  a  limitation  of  it  which  Rousseau 
had  not  touched  on. 

If  proof  were  needed  of  what  particular 
merits  this  pamphlet  displayed,  it  would  be 
sufficient  to  point  out  that  in  a  time  when 
the  problem  represented  by  religion  was 
least  comprehended,  when  the  practice  of 
religion  was  at  its  lowest,  and  when  the 
meaning,  almost,  of  religion  had  left  men's 
minds,  Rousseau  was  capable  of  writing  his 
final  chapter. 

That  the  great  religious  revival  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  should  have  proved  Rousseau's 
view  of  religion  in  the  State  to  be  insufficient 
is  in  no  way  remarkable,  for  when  Rousseau 
wrote,  that  revival  was  undreamt  of  ;  what 
is  remarkable  is  that  he  should  have  allowed 
as  he  did  for  the  religious  sentiment,  and 
above  all,   that    he  should    have    seen   how 

B  2 


S6       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

impossible  it  is  for  a  selection  of  Christian 
dogma  to  be  accepted  as  a  civic  religion. 

It  is  further  amazing  that  at  such  a  time 
a  man  could  be  found  who  should  appreciate 
that  for  the  State,  to  have  unity,  it  must 
possess  a  religion,  and  Rousseau's  attempt  to 
define  that  minimum  or  substratum  of  religion 
without  which  unity  could  not  exist  in  the 
State  unfortunately  became  the  commonplace 
of  the  politicians,  and  particularly  of  the 
English  politicians  who  succeeded  him.  Who 
might  not  think,  for  instance,  that  he  was 
reading — though  better  expressed,  of  course, 
than  a  politician  could  put  it — some  "  Liberal" 
politician  at  Westminster,  if  he  were  to  come 
on  such  phrases  as  these  with  regard  to  what 
should  be  taught  in  the  schools  of  the  country  ? 

''  The  doctrines  taught  by  the  State  should 
be  simple,  few  in  number,  expressed  with 
precision  and  without  explanation  or  com- 
mentary. The  existence  of  a  powerful  God, 
beneficent,  providential  and  good;  the  future 
life;  the  happiness  of  the  good  and  the  pun- 
ishment of  evil;  the  sanctity  of  the  agree- 
ments which  bind  society  together  and  of  laws ; 
while  as  for  negative  doctrines,  one  is  sufficient, 
and  that  one  is  the  wickedness  of  intolerance." 

Rousseau's  hundred  pages  are  the  direct 
source  of  the  theory  of  the  modern  State  ; 
their  lucidity  and  unmatched  economy  of 
diction  ;  their  rigid  analysis,  their  epigram- 
matic judgment  and  wisdom — these  are  the 
reservoirs  from  whence  modern  democracy 
has  flowed  ;  what  are  now  proved  to  be  the 
errors  of  democracy  are  errors  against  which 


THE  CHARACTERS  37 

the  Contrat  Social  warned  men  ;  the  moral 
apology  of  democracy  is  the  moral  apology 
written  by  Rousseau  ;  and  if  in  this  one  point 
of  religion  he  struck  a  more  confused  and  a 
less  determined  note  than  in  the  rest,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  in  his  time  no  other 
man  understood  what  part  religion  played  in 
human  affairs  ;  for  in  his  days  the  few  who 
studied  religion  and  observed  it  could  not 
connect  it  in  any  way  with  the  political 
nature  of  man,  and  of  those  who  counted  in 
the  intellect  of  Europe,  by  far  the  greater 
number  thought  political  problems  better 
solved  if  religion  (which  they  had  lost)  were 
treated  as  negligible.  They  were  wrong — 
and  Rousseau,  in  his  generalities  upon  the 
soul,  was  insufficient  ;  both  were  beneath 
the  height  of  a  final  theory  of  man,  but 
Rousseau  came  much  nearer  to  comprehen- 
sion, even  in  this  point  of  religion,  than  did 
any  of  his  contemporaries. 


III 

THE  CHARACTERS   OF  THE  REVOLUTION 

KING  LOUIS  XVI 

As  might  be  expected,  the  character  of 
King  Louis  XVI  has  suffered  more  dis- 
tortion at  the  hands  of  historians  than  has 
any  other  of  the  revolutionary  figures  ;  and 
this  because  he  combined  with  that  per- 
sonal  character   of    his    a   certain   office   to 


38       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

which  were  traditionally  attached  certain 
points  of  view  and  methods  of  action  which 
the  historian  takes  for  granted  when  he  deals 
with  the  character  of  the  man.  As  any  one 
thinking  of  a  judge  of  some  standing  upon 
the  English  bench  cannot  but  believe  that 
he  is  possessed  of  some  learning  or  some 
gravity,  etc. ;  as  any  one  hearing  of  a  famous 
soldier  cannot  but  believe  that  he  has  certain 
qualities  associated  with  the  business  of 
soldiering,  so  historians  tend  to  confuse  the 
personality  and  character  of  Louis  XVI 
with  that  of  his  office;  they  either  by  con- 
trast exaggerate  his  unkingly  defects  or  by 
sympathy  exaggerate  his  kingly  opposition 
to  reform. 

The  student  will  do  well  to  avoid  this 
error  and  its  source,  and  to  think  of  Louis 
as  of  a  man  who  had  been  casually  intro- 
duced, almost  without  preparation,  into  the 
office  which  he  held.  In  other  words,  the 
student  will  do  wxU,  in  his  reading  of  the 
Revolution,  to  consider  Louis  XVI  simply 
as  a  man,  and  his  character  as  a  private 
character.  For  this  last  of  the  long,  un- 
broken line  of  Capetians  possessed  a  character 
essentially  individual.  It  was  of  a  type 
which,  no  matter  what  accidents  of  fortune 
might  have  fallen  upon  its  possessor,  would 
have  remained  the  same.  Nor  was  ever  a 
man  possessed  of  high  office  whom  high  office 
had  less  moulded. 

Men  thus  impervious  to  their  environment 
are  commonly  so  from  two  causes  :  either 
from  an  intense  and  vivid  personal  initiative 


THE  CHARACTERS  3d 

which  may  border  upon  madness,  or  from 
something  thick  and  heavy  in  their  moral 
accoutrement  which  defends  against  external 
action  the  inner  personal  temperament.  The 
latter  was  the  case  with  Louis. 

He  was  very  slow  of  thought,  and  very 
slow  of  decision.  His  physical  movements 
were  slow.  The  movement  of  his  eyes  was 
notably  slow.  He  had  a  w^ay  of  falling 
asleep  under  the  effort  of  fatigue  at  the 
most  incon^jruous  moments.  The  things  that 
amused  him  were  of  the  largest  and  most 
superficial  kind  Horse-play,  now  and  then 
a  little  touched  with  eccentricity,  and  very 
plain  but  unexpected  jokes.  One  may  express 
him  from  one  aspect  by  saying  that  he  was 
one  of  those  men  whom  you  could  never 
by  any  chance  have  hoped  to  convince  of 
anything.  The  few  things  which  he  accepted 
he  accepted  quite  simply,  and  the  process  of 
reasoning  in  the  mouth  of  any  who  approached 
him  was  always  too  rapid  for  him  to  follow. 
But  it  must  not  be  imagined  on  this  account 
that  the  moral  integument  so  described  was 
wrapped  about  a  void.  On  the  contrary^ 
it  enclosed  a  very  definite  character.  Louis 
possessed  a  number  of  intimate  convictions 
upon  which  he  was  not  to  be  shaken.  He 
was  profoundly  convinced  of  the  existence 
and  value  of  a  certain  corporate  tradition 
in  the  organism  which  he  ruled  :  the  French 
nation.  He  was  national.  In  this  he  differed 
from  many  a  pedant,  many  a  courtier,  many 
an  ecclesiastic,  and  many  a  woman  about 
him,  especially  his  wife. 


40       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

He  was,  again,  possessed  of  all  the  elements 
of  the  Catholic  faith. 

It  was,  indeed,  a  singular  thing  for  a  man 
of  his  position  at  such  a  time  to  hold  inti- 
mately to  religion,  but  Louis  held  to  it. 
He  confessed,  he  communicated,  he  attended 
mass,  he  performed  his  ordinary  devotions — 
not  by  way  of  tradition  or  political  duty, 
or  State  function,  to  which  religious  per- 
formance was  now  reduced  in  the  vast 
majority  of  his  wealthy  contemporaries,  but 
as  an  individual  for  whom  these  things  had 
a  personal  value.  Had  he,  with  precisely 
the  same  interior  spirit,  woken  in  his  bed 
some  morning  to  find  himself  a  country 
squire,  and  to  discover  that  all  his  past 
kingship  had  been  a  dream  of  the  night, 
he  would  have  continued  the  practice  of 
his  religion  as  before. 

Now  this  is  a  sufficiently  remarkable  point, 
for  the  country  squire,  the  noble,  the  lawyer, 
the  university  professor  of  the  generation  im- 
mediately preceding  the  Revolution  had,  as 
a  rule,  no  conception  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
With  them  the  faith  was  dead,  save  in  the 
case  of  a  very  few  who  made  it,  if  one 
may  say  so  without  disrespect,  a  mania,  and 
in  their  exaggerations  were  themselves  the 
proofs  of  the  depth  of  decay  into  which  the 
Church  of  Gaul  had  fallen. 

Louis  XVI  was  possessed,  then,  of  religion  : 
it  appeared  in  many  of  his  acts,  in  his  hesita- 
tion to  appoint  not  a  few  of  the  many  atheist 
bishops  of  the  time,  in  his  real  agony  of 
responsibility  upon  the  Civil  Constitution  of 


THE   CHARACTERS  41 

the  clergy,  and  in  nothing  more  than  the 
pecuHar  sobriety  and  soHd  ritual  whereby 
he  prepared  for  a  tragic,  sudden,  and  igno- 
minious death. 

It  is  next  to  be  observed  that  though  he 
was  a  man  not  yet  in  middle  age,  and  though 
he  was  quite  devoid  of  ardour  in  any  form, 
he  had  from  the  first  matured  a  great  basis 
of  courage.  It  is  well  to  admit  that  this 
quality  in  him  was  connected  with  those 
slow  processes  of  thou^ght  and  action  which 
hampered  him,  but  it  is  not  to  be  explained 
by  them.  No  man  yet  has  become  brave 
through  mere  stupidity. 

It  was  not  only  the  accidents  of  the  Revolu- 
tion that  proved  this  quality  in  him  :  his 
physical  habits  proved  it  long  before.  He 
was  a  resolute  and  capable  rider  of  the  horse  : 
an  aptitude  in  that  exercise  is  impossible  to 
the  coward.  Again,  in  those  by-products  of 
courage  which  are  apparent,  even  where  no 
physical  danger  threatens,  he  was  conspicu- 
ous ;  he  had  no  hesitation  in  facing  a  number 
of  men,  and  he  had  aptitude  in  a  mechanical 
trade — a  business  by  no  means  unconnected 
with  virility. 

Now  in  mentioning  his  virility,  it  is  of 
prime  importance  for  the  student  to  remem- 
ber, though  the  matter  can  be  touched  upon 
but  lightly,  that  Louis,  in  this  department 
of  physical  life,  suffered  from  a  mechanical 
impediment  which  gravely  distorted  the  first 
years  of  his  marriage,  which  undoubtedly 
wounded  his  self-respect,  and  which  was 
perhaps  the  only  thing  that  caused  him  per- 


42       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

manent  anxiety.  He  was  cured  by  medical 
aid  in  the  summer  of  the  year  1777,  but  he 
was  ah^eady  three  years  a  king  and  seven 
years  a  husband  before  that  relief  came  to 
him.  The  tragedy  affected  his  whole  life, 
and,  I  repeat,  must  never  be  forgotten  when 
one  considers  either  him  or  Marie  Antoinette 
in  their  intimate  character,  and  in  their 
effect  as  actors  in  the  great  drama. 

For  the  rest,  the  character  of  Louis  betrayed 
certain  ineptitudes  (the  word  ineptitude  is  far 
more  accurate  in  this  connection  than  the  word 
weakness),  which  ineptitudes  were  peculiarly 
fatal  for  the  military  office  which  he  held  and 
for  the  belligerent  crisis  which  he  had  to  meet. 

Few  men  are  possessed  of  the  eye,  the 
^subtle  sympathy,  the  very  rapid  power  of 
decision,  and  the  comprehension  of  human 
contrasts  and  differences  which  build  up  the 
apt  leader  of  an  armed  force  great  or  small. 
Most  men  are  mediocre  in  the  combination 
of  these  qualities.  But  Louis  was  quite  ex- 
ceptionally hopeless  where  they  were  con- 
cerned. He  could  never  have  seen  the 
simplest  position  nor  have  appreciated  the 
military  aspects  of  any  character  or  of  any 
body  of  men.  He  could  ride,  but  he  could 
not  ride  at  the  head  of  a  column.  He 
was  not  merely  bad  at  this  trade,  he  was 
nuL  Drafted  as  a  private  into  a  conscript 
army,  he  would  never  have  been  entrusted 
with  the  duties  of  a  corporal.  He  would  have 
been  impossible  as  a  sergeant;  and,  possessed 
of  commissioned  rank,  ridicule  would  have 
compelled  him  to  take  his  discharge. 


THE   CHARACTERS  43 

This  lack  did  not  only,  or  chiefly,  betray 
itself  in  his  inability  to  meet  personally  the 
armed  crisis  of  a  revolution;  it  was  not  only, 
or  chiefly,  apparent  in  his  complete  break- 
down during  the  assault  upon  the  palace 
on  the  10th  of  August :  it  was  also,  and 
much  more,  the  disastrous  cause  of  his 
inability  to  oversee,  or  even  to  choose,  military 
advisers. 

Those  who  propose  in  the  early  part  of 
the  Revolution  to  check  the  mob  in  Paris, 
are  excellent  commanders  :  but  Louis  does  not 
know  it.  Those  who  succeed  each  other  at 
the  Ministry  of  War,  or  at  the  head  of  the 
armies  during  the  active  part  of  the  revolu- 
tion are  various  in  the  extreme :  but  they 
all  seem  one  to  him.  Between  a  fop  Hke 
Narbonne  and  a  subtle,  trained  cavalrv  man 
like  Dumouriez,  Louis  made  no  distinction. 
The  military  qualities  of  La  Fayette  (which 
were  not  to  be  despised)  meant  no  more  to 
him  than  does  music,  good  or  bad,  to  a  deaf 
man.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
the  movement,  the  whole  of  the  military 
problem  escaped  him. 

Another  hole  in  his  character,  which  was 
of  prime  importance  at  such  a  time,  was  his 
inability  to  grasp  in  a  clear  vision  any  general 
social  problem.  Maps  he  could  well  com- 
prehend, and  he  could  well  retain  statistics  ; 
but  the  landscape,  as  it  were,  of  the  Revo- 
lution his  protuberant  and  lethargic  eyes 
completely  missed.  He  was  quite  unable  to 
see  where  lay  danger  and  where  support,  in 
what  large  masses  such  and  such  forces  were 


44       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

grouped,  and  the  directions  in  which  they 
were  advancing,  or  upon  which  they  must 
retreat*  In  this  matter  he  was,  as  will  be 
seen  in  a  moment,  the  very  opposite  of 
Mirabeau,  ^nd  it  was  on  account  of  this 
weakness,  or  rather  this  form  of  nullity,  that 
all  Mirabeau's  vision  was  wasted  upon  Louis. 

Finally,  he  had  no  working  comprehension 
^of  Europe.  He  did  not  even  exaggerate  the 
powers  of  the  allies  in  the  later  phases  of 
the  Revolution  when  they  were  marching 
upon  France.  He  did  not  either  under- 
estimate or  over-estimate  the  policy  and 
naval  force  of  Great  Britain,  the  military 
resources  of  his  own  subjects,  the  probable 
sympathies  of  the  Netherlands  (anti -Austrian 
but  Catholic),  the  decay  of  Spain,  the  division 
and  impotence  of  the  Italian  Peninsula.  Louis 
saw  nothing  of  all  these  things. 

One  may  conclude  the  picture  (for  the 
purposes  of  such  a  short  study  as  this)  by 
saying  that  only  one  coincidence  could  have 
led  him  through  the  labyrinth  of  the  time 
with  success.  That  coincidence  would  have 
been  the  presence  at  his  side  of  a  friend  fully 
trusted  from  childhood,  loved,  as  religious 
as  himself,  and  yet  possessing  precisely  those 
.qualities  which  he  himself  lacked.  Had 
Louis  found  to  hand  such  a  lieutenant,  the 
qualities  I  ,have  mentioned  would  have  been 
a  sort  of  keel  and  ballast  which  w^ould  have 
secured  the  monarchy,  for  he  was  not  weak, 
he  was  not  impulsive,  he  was  not  even  foolish  : 
he  was  only  wretchedly  alone  in  his  incapaci- 
ties.    Certainly    such   a   nature   could   trust 


THE   CHARACTERS  45 

and  rely  upon  no  one  who  was  not  of  this 
intimate  kind,  and  he  possessed  no  such 
intimate,  let  alone  an  intimate  who  could 
command  the  qualities  I  have  suggested. 

Being  what  he  was,  his  character  is  among 
the  half-dozen  which  determined  the  Revolii- 
Jtion  to  take  the  course  which  it  did. 

THE  QUEEN 

Marie  Antoinette  presents  to  history  a 
character  which  it  is  of  the  highest  interest 
to  regard  as  a  whole.  It  is  the  business  of 
her  biographers  to  consider  that  character 
as  a  whole ;  but  in  her  connection  with  the 
Revolution  there  is  but  one  aspect  of  it 
which  is  of  importance,  and  that  is  the 
attitude  which  such  a  character  was  bound 
to  take  towards  the  French  nation  in  the 
midst  of  which  the  Queen  found  herself. 

It  is  the  solution  of  the  whole  problem 
which  the  Queen's  action  sets  before  us  to 
apprehend  the  gulf  that  separated  her  not 
only  from  the  French  temperament,  but 
from  a  comprehension  of  all  French  society. 
Had  she  been  a  woman  lacking  in  energy 
or  in  decision,  this  alien  character  in  her 
would  have  been  a  small  matter,  and  her 
ignorance  of  the  French  in  every  form  of 
their  activity,  or  rather  her  inability  to 
comprehend  them,  would  have  been  but  a 
private  failing  productive  only  of  certain 
local  and  immediate  consequences,  and  not 
in  any  way  determining  the  great  lines  of 
the  revolutionary  movement. 


46       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

As  it  was,  her  energy  was  not  only  abundant 
but  steadfast  ;  it  grew  more  secure  in  its 
action  as  it  increased  with  her  years,  and  the 
initiative  which  gave  that  energy  its  course 
never  vacillated,  but  was  alwavs  direct.  She 
knew  her  own  mind,  and  she  attempted,  often 
with  a  partial  success,  to  realise  her  convic- 
tions. There  was  no  character  in  touch  with 
the  Executive  during  the  first  years  of  the 
Revolution  comparable  to  hers  for  fixity  of 
purpose  and  definition  of  view. 

It  was  due  to  this  energy  and  singleness  of 
aim  that  her  misunderstanding  of  the  material 
with  which  she  had  to  deal  was  of  such  fatal 
importance. 

It  was  she  who  chose,  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution,  the  successi  on  of  those  ministers 
both  Liberal  and  Reactionary,  whose  unwise 
plans  upon  either  side  precipitated  violence. 
It  was  she  who  called  and  then  revoked, 
and  later  recalled  to  office  the  wealthy  and 
over-estimated  Necker;  she  who  substituted 
for  him,  and  then  so  inopportunely  threw  over 
Calonne,  the  most  national  of  the  precursors 
of  the  Revolution,  and  ever  after  her  most 
bitter  enemy;  it  was  she  who  advised  the 
more  particularly  irritating  details  of  resist- 
ance after  the  meeting  of  the  first  revolu- 
tionary Parliament ;  it  was  she  who  presided 
over  (and  helped  to  warp)  the  plans  for 
the  flight  of  the  royal  family  ;  it  was  she 
who,  after  this  flight  had  failed,  framed  a 
definite  scheme  for  the  coercion  of  the  French 
people  by  the  Governments  of  Europe;  it 
was  she  who  betrayed  to  foreign  chanceries 


THE   CHARACTERS  47 

the  French  plan  of  campaign  when  war 
had  become  inevitable;  finally,  it  w^as  she 
who  inspired  the  declaration  of  Brunswick 
which  accompanied  the  invasion  of  French 
territory,  and  she  was  in  particular  the  author 
of  the  famous  threat  therein  contained  to 
give  over  Paris  to  military  execution,  and  to 
hold  all  the  popular  authorities  responsible 
with  their  lives  for  the  restoration  of  the 
pre-revolutionary  state  of  affairs. 

As  research  proceeds,  the  capital  effect  of  this 
woman's  continual  and  decided  interference 
will  be  more  and  more  apparent  to  historians. 

Now  Marie  Antoinette's  conception  of  man- 
kind in  general  was  the  conception  that  you 
will  find  prevalent  in  such  societies  as  that 
domestic  and  warm  centre  which  had 
nourished  her  childhood.  The  romantic  affec- 
tion of  a  few  equals,  the  personal  loyalty  of 
a  handful  of  personal  servants,  the  vague 
histrionic  content  which  permeates  the  poor 
at  the  sight  of  great  equipages  and  rich 
accoutrements,  the  cheers  of  a  crowd  when 
such  symbols  accompanying  monarchy  are 
displayed  in  the  streets — all  these  were  for 
Marie  Antoinette  the  fundamental  political 
feelings  of  mankind.  An  absence  of  them 
she  regarded  with  bewilderment,  an  active 
opposition  to  them  she  hated  as  something 
at  once  incomprehensible  and  positively  evil. 

There  was  in  all  this  illusion,  of  course,  a 
great  element  of  what  the  English  call  middle 
class,  and  the  French  bourgeois.  To  be  quite 
ignorant  of  what  servitors  will  say  of  their 
masters  behind  their  backs;    not  to  appre- 


48       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION    / 

ciate  that  heroic  devotion  is  the  faculty  of 
a  few ;  never  to  have  imagined  the  discontents 
of  men  in  general,  and  the  creative  desire 
for  self-expression  which  inspires  men  when 
they  act  politically;  not  to  know  that  men 
as  a  whole  (and  particularly  the  French 
people)  are  not  deceived  by  the  accidents 
of  wealth,  nor  attach  any  real  inferiority 
to  poverty ;  to  despise  the  common  will  of 
numbers  or  to  doubt  its  existence;  to  see 
society  established  in  a  hierarchy  not  of  office 
but  of  leisure :  all  this  may  seem  to  the 
democrat  a  very  unnatural  and  despicable 
mood.  But  it  was  not  despicable,  still  less 
unnatural,  in  the  case  of  Marie  Antoinette : 
it  was  the  only  experience  and  the  only 
conception  of  society  which  had  ever  been 
given  her.  She  had  always  believed,  when  she 
gazed  upon  a  mass  of  the  populace,  that  the 
difference  between  the  crowd  and  herself  was 
a  moral  reality.  The  contrast  in  external 
habits  between  the  wealthy,  the  middle 
class,  and  the  poor — a  contrast  ultimately 
produced  by  differences  in  the  oppor- 
tunity and  leisure  which  wealth  affords 
— she  thought  to  be  fundamental.  Just  as 
children  and  certain  domestic  pet  animals 
regard  such  economic  accidents  in  society  as 
something  real  which  differentiates  men,  so 
did  she  ; — ^but  she  happened  to  nourish  this 
illusion  in  the  midst  of  a  people,  and  within 
a  day's  walk  of  a  capital,  where  the  miscon- 
ception had  less  hold  than  in  any  other 
district  of  Europe. 

Of  the  traits  peculiar  to  the  French  she 


THE   CHARACTERS  49 

knew  nothing,  or,  to  put  it  more  strongly,  she 
could  not  believe  that  they  really  existed. 

The  extremes  of  cruelty  into  which  this 
people  could  fall  were  inconceivable  to  her,  as 
were  also  the  extremes  of  courage  to  which 
they  can  rise  under  the  same  excitements 
as  arouse  them  to  an  excess  of  hatred.  But 
that  character  in  the  French  which  she  most 
utterly  failed  to  foresee  or  to  comprehend, 
was  their  power  of  corporate  organisation. 

That  a  multitude  could  instruct  and  order 
t'lemselves  for  a  common  purpose,  rapidly 
acquire  and  nominate  the  officers  who  should 
bring  that  purpose  to  fruition,  and  in  general 
pass  in  one  moment  from  a  mere  multitude 
to  an  incipient  army — that  was  a  faculty 
which  the  French  had  and  have  to  a  peculiar 
degree,  and  which  she  (like  so  many  of  our 
own  contemporaries,  and  especially  those  of 
German  blood)  could  not  believe  to  be  real. 
This  faculty  in  the  French,  when  it  took 
action  and  was  apparent  in  the  physical 
struggles  of  the  Revolution,  seemed  to  her, 
to  the  very  end,  a  sort  of  nightmare;  some- 
thing which,  by  all  the  laws  of  reality,  ought 
not  to  be  happening,  but  somehow  or  other 
was  happening  in  a  manner  evilly  miraculous. 
It  w^as  her  ignorance  upon  this  main  point 
of  all  that  caused  her  to  rely  so  continually 
upon  the  use  of  the  regular  forces,  and  of  those 
forces  in  insufficient  numbers.  She  could  not 
but  believe  that  a  few  trained  soldierv  were 
necessarily  the  masters  of  great  civilian 
bodies  ;  their  uniforms  were  a  powerful 
argument  with  her,  and  mere  civilian  bodies, 


50       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

however  numerous,  were  always,  in  her  con- 
ception, a  dust  of  disparate  and  inchoate 
humanity.  She  believed  there  was  nothing  to 
attack  or  resist  in  popular  numbers  but  the 
opinion,  the  fear,  or  the  cupidity  of  the 
individual.  In  this  error  of  judgment  con- 
cerning the  French  people  she  was  not  peculiar : 
it  is  an  error  repeated  over  and  over  again  by 
foreigners,  and  even  by  some  native  com- 
mentators w^hen  they  seek  to  account  for 
some  national  movement  of  the  Gauls.  The 
unlearning  of  it  is  the  first  lesson  which  those 
who  would  either  administrate  or  resist  the 
French  should  learn. 

In  the  matter  of  religion  (which  the  reader 
may  see  in  these  pages  to  be  of  such  moment 
in  the  revolutionary  story),  the  queen  was 
originally  far  more  indifferent  than  her 
husband,  though  she  observed  a  certain 
measure  of  personal  practice.  It  was  not 
until  her  heavy  misfortunes  came  upon  her 
that  any  degree  of  personal  devotion  appeared 
in  her  daily  life,  though  it  must  be  admitted 
that,  by  a  sort  of  premonition  of  disaster, 
she  turned  to  religion  in  the  months  imme- 
diately preceding  the  outbreak  of  the  reform. 

It  remains  to  describe  the  personal  effect 
she  had  upon  those  who  were  in  her  im- 
mediate presence.  Most  of  the  French  aris- 
tocracy she  repelled.  The  same  misfortune 
which  made  her  unable  to  understand  the 
French  temperament  as  a  whole  divorced 
her  from  that  particular  corner  of  it  which 
took  the  shape  of  French  aristocratic  tradi- 
tion.    She  did  not  understand  its  stiffness, 


THE   CHARACTERS  51 

its  exactitude,  its  brilliancy  or  its  hardness : 
and  she  heartily  disliked  all  four. 

On  this  account  she  produced  on  the  great 
families  of  her  court,  and  especially  upon 
the  women  of  them,  an  effect  of  vulgarity. 
Had  she  survived,  and  had  her  misfortunes 
not  been  of  so  tragic  an  intensity,  the  legend 
she  would  have  left  in  French  society  would 
certainly  have  been  one  of  off-handed  care- 
lessness, self-indulgence,  and  lack  of  dignity 
which  have  for  the  French  of  that  rank 
the  savour  that  a  loud  voice,  a  bad  accent, 
an  insufficient  usage  in  the  rules  of  daily  con- 
duct, leave  upon  what  is  left  of  a  corresponding 
rank  in  England  to-day. 

She  was,  on  the  other  hand,  easily  deceived 
by  the  flattery  of  place  seekers,  and  the  great 
power  which  she  wielded  in  politics  just  be- 
fore the  Revolution  broke  out  made  her,  as  it 
were,  a  sort  of  butt  of  the  politicians. 

They  haunted  her  presence,  they  depended 
upon  her  patronage,  and,  at  the  same  time,  they 
secretly  ridiculed  her.  Her  carriage,  which  was 
designed  to  impress  onlookers  and  did  have 
that  effect  upon  most  foreigners,  seemed  to 
most  of  the  French  observers  (of  a  rank  which 
permitted  them  to  approach  her  familiarly) 
somewhat  theatrical  and  sometimes  actually 
absurd.  The  earnestness  which  she  displayed 
in  several  lines  of  conduct,  and  notably  in 
her  determined  animosity  to  certain  characters 
(as  that  of  La  Fayette,  for  instance),  was  of 
an  open  and  violent  sort  which  seemed  to 
them  merely  brutal  and  unintelligent  ;  her 
luxury,  moreover,  was  noticed  by  the  refined 


52       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

world  of  Versailles  to  be  hardly  ever  of  her 
own  choosing,  but  nearly  always  practised 
in  imitation  of  others. 

In  connection  with  that  trait  of  luxury, 
the  reader  must  appreciate  at  the  outset 
that  it  was  grievously  exaggerated  by  her 
contemporaries,  and  has  been  still  more 
exaggerated  by  posterity.  She  was  not  a 
very  frivolous,  still  less  a  dissipated,  woman. 
She  was  woefully  loose  in  tongue,  but  she  was 
certainly  virtuous. 

She  gambled,  but  as  the  times  went,  and 
the  supposed  unlimited  fortune  of  the  Crown, 
her  gambling  was  not  often  excessive  ;  her 
expenditure  upon  jewellery  and  dress  would 
be  thought  most  moderate  to-day  in  the  case 
of  any  lady  of  our  wealthier  families.  On 
the  other  hand,  her  whims  were  continual 
and  as  continually  changing,  especially  in  the 
earlier  part  of  her  life. 

Since  that  surrounding  world  of  the  Com't 
which  she  misunderstood  and  which  had  no 
sympathy  with  her  was  ready  to  find  some 
handle  against  her,  that  handle  of  dissipation 
was  the  easiest  for  them  to  seize  ;  but  the 
accusation  was  not  a  just  one. 

Had  fortune  made  her  the  wife  of  a  poor 
man  in  a  lower  class  of  society,  Marie  Antoin- 
ette would  have  been  a  capable  housewife : 
her  abundant  energy  would  have  found  a 
proper  channel,  and  she  was  in  no  way  by 
nature   extravagant. 

She  had  a  few  very  passionate  and  somewhat 
too  sentimental  friendships,  some  of  which 
were  returned,  others  of  which  their  objects 


THE   CHARACTERS  58 

exploited  to  their  own  advantage.  The  two 
most  famous  were  her  friendship  for  the 
Princess  de  Lamballe  and  for  Madame  de 
Pohgnac.  These  moved  her  not  infrequently 
to  unwise  acts  of  patronage  which  were  im- 
mediately seized  by  the  popular  voice  and 
turned  against  her.  They  were  among  the 
few  weaknesses  apparent  in  her  general  tem- 
per. They  were  certainly  ill  balanced  and 
ill  judged. 

She  indulged  also  in  a  number  of  small  and 
unimportant  flirtations  which  might  almost 
be  called  the  routine  of  her  rank  and  world; 
she  had  but  one  great  affection  in  her  life  for 
the  other  sex,  and  it  was  most  ardently 
returned.  Its  object  was  a  Swedish  noble  of 
her  own  age,  the  very  opposite  of  the  French 
in  his  temper,  romantically  chivalrous,  un- 
practical in  the  extreme,  gentle,  intensely 
reserved  ;  his  name  Count  Axel  de  Fersen. 
The  affair  remained  pure,  but  she  loved  him 
with  her  whole  heart,  and  in  the  last  months 
of  her  tragedy  this  emotion  must  be  regarded 
as  the  chief  concern  of  her  soul.  They  saw 
each  other  but  very  rarely,  often  they  were 
separated  for  years ;  it  was  this,  perhaps, 
which  lent  both  glamour  and  fidelity  to  the 
strange  romance. 

MIRABEAU 

Mirabeau,  the  chief  of  the  "  practical " 
men  of  the  Revolution  (as  the  English  language 
would  render  the  most  salient  point  in  their 
political   attitude),    needs   a   very   particular 


54       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

examination.  His  influence  upon  the  early- 
part  of  the  Revokition  was  so  considerable, 
the  effect  of  his  death  was  so  determinant 
and  final,  the  speculation  as  to  what 
might  have  happened  had  he  survived  is  so 
fruitful,  so  entertaining,  and  so  common,  and 
the  positive  effect  of  his  attitude  upon  the 
development  of  the  Revolution  after  his  death 
was  so  wide,  that  to  misunderstand  Mirabeau 
is  in  a  large  measure  to  misunderstand  the 
whole  movement  ;  and  Mirabeau  has  unfor- 
tunately been  ill  or  superficially  understood 
by  many  among  now  three  generations  of 
historians  ;  for  a  comprehension  of  this  char- 
acter is  not  a  matter  for  research  nor  for 
accumulated  historic  detail,  but  rather  a  task 
for  sympathy. 

Mirabeau  was  essentially  an  artist,  with  the 
powers  and  the  frailties  which  we  properly- 
associate  with  that  term :  that  is,  strong 
emotion  appealed  to  him  both  internally  and 
externally.  He  loved  to  enjoy  it  himself, 
he  loved  to  create  it  in  others.  He  studied, 
therefore,  and  was  a  master  of,  the  material 
by  which  such  emotion  may  be  created  ;  he 
himself  yielded  to  strong  emotion  and  sought 
it  where  it  might  be  found.  It  is  foolish  alike 
to  belittle  and  to  exaggerate  this  type  of 
temperament.  Upon  it  or  upon  its  admixture 
with  other  qualities  is  based  the  music,  the 
plastic  art,  and  in  a  large  measure  the  per- 
manent literature  of  the  world.  This  aptitude 
for  the  enjoyment  and  for  the  creation  in 
others  of  emotion  clothes  intellectual  work 
in  a  manner  which  makes  it  permanent.     This 


THE   CHARACTERS  55 

is  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  style  is 
necessary  to  a  book  ;  that  a  great  civilisation 
may  partly  be  judged  by  its  architecture;  that, 
as  Plato  says,  music  may  be  moral  or  immoral, 
and  so  forth.  The  artist,  though  he  is  not 
at  the  root  of  human  affairs,  is  a  necessary 
and  proper  ally  in  their  development. 

When  I  say  that  Mirabeau  was  an  artist  I 
mean  that  wherever  his  energies  might  have 
found  play  he  would  there  have  desired  to 
enjoy  and  to  create  enjoyment  through  some 
definite  medium.  This  medium  was  in  part 
literary,  but  much  more  largely  oral  expres- 
sion. To  be  a  tribune,  that  is  the  voice  of 
great  numbers,  to  persuade,  nay,  to  please 
by  his  very  accents  and  the  very  rhythm 
of  his  sentences,  these  things  occupied  the 
man;  but  he  also  brought  into  his  art  that 
without  which  no  great  art  can  exist :  mere 
intellect. 

He  believed  in  the  main  principles  at  least 
which  underlay  the  revolutionary  movement, 
he  understood  them  and  he  was  prepared  to 
propagate  them;  but  his  power  over  men  was 
not  due  to  this  conviction  :  his  power  over 
men  was  wholly  that  of  the  artist,  and  had  he 
by  some  accident  been  engaged  in  maintaining 
the  attack  against  democracy,  he  would  have 
been  nearly  as  famous  as  he  became  under  the 
title  of  its  defender.  We  must  then  always 
consider  Mirabeau  as  an  orator,  though  an 
orator  endowed  with  a  fine  and  clear  intelli- 
gence and  with  no  small  measure  of  reasoned 
faith. 

Much  else  remains  to  be  said  of  him. 


5Q       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

He  was  a  gentleman;  that  is,  he  both  en- 
joyed and  suffered  the  consequences  which 
attach  to  hereditary  wealth  and  to  the  atmo- 
sphere that  surrounds  its  expenditure.  On 
this  account,  he  being  personally  insufficiently 
provided  with  wealth,  he  was  for  ever  in  debt, 
and  regarded  the  sums  necessary  to  his  sta- 
tion in  life  and  to  his  large  opportunities  as 
things  due  to  him,  so  to  speak,  from  society. 
We  are  right  when  we  say  that  he  took  bribes, 
but  wrong  if  we  imagine  that  those  bribes 
bound  him  as  they  would  bind  a  man  meaner 
in  character  or  less  lucky  in  his  birth.  He 
stooped  as  gentlemen  will  to  all  manner  of  low 
intrigues,  to  obtain  "  the  necessary  and  the 
wherewith "  ;  that  is,  money  for  his  rSle. 
But  there  was  a  driving  power  behind  him, 
bound  up  with  his  whole  character,  which  made 
it  impossible  for  any  such  sums  to  control 
his  diction  or  to  make  of  such  a  man  a  mere 
advocate.  He  was  never  that  dirtiest  of 
political  phenomena,  the  "  party  man."  He 
would  never  have  been,  had  he  been  born 
a  hundred  years  later  and  thrust  into  the 
nastiness  of  modern  parliamentary  life,  "  a 
parliamentary  hand." 

Mirabeau  had  behind  him  a  certain  personal 
history  which  we  must  read  in  connection 
with  his  temperament. 

He  had  travelled  widely,  he  knew  English- 
men and  Germans  of  the  wealthier  classes 
well.  The  populace  he  knew  ill  even  in  his 
own  country;  abroad  he  knew  it  not  at  all. 
He  had  suffered  from  his  father's  dislike  of 
him,   from  the  consequence  of  his  own  un- 


i 


THE   CHARACTERS  57 

bridled  passions,  also  not  a  little  from  mere 
accidental  misfortune.  Capable  of  prolonged 
and  faithful  attachment  to  some  woman,  the 
opportunity  for  that  attachment  had  never 
been  afforded  him  until  the  last  few  months 
before  his  death.  Capable  of  paying  loyal  and 
industrious  service  to  some  political  system,  no 
political  system  had  chosen  him  for  its  servant. 
It  is  a  fruitful  matter  of  speculation  to  con- 
sider what  he  might  have  done  for  the  French 
monarchy  had  Fate  put  him  early  at  Court 
and  given  him  some  voice  in  the  affairs  of  the 
French  Executive  before  the  Revolution  broke 
out.  As  it  was,  the  Revolution  provided  him 
with  his  opportunity  merely  because  it  broke 
down  old  barriers  and  conventions  and  was 
destructive  of  the  framev/ork  of  the  State  in 
which  he  lived.  He  was  compelled  to  enter 
the  Revolution  as  something  of  a  destroyer, 
for  by  no  other  avenue  could  he  be  given  his 
chance ;  but  by  nature  he  detested  destruction. 
I  mean  (since  this  phrase  is  somewhat  vague) 
he  detested  that  spirit  which  will  disendow  a 
nation  of  certain  permanent  institutions  serv- 
ing definite  ends,  without  a  clear  scheme  of  how 
those  institutions  should  be  replaced  by  others 
to  serve  similar  ends.  It  was  on  this  account 
that  he  was  most  genuinely  and  sincerely  a 
defender  of  the  monarchy :  a  permanent  in- 
stitution serving  the  definite  ends  of  national 
unity  and  the  repression  of  tendencies  to 
oligarchy  in  the  State. 

Mirabeau  had  none  of  the  revolutionary 
Vision.  In  mind  he  was  prematurely  aged, 
for  his  mind  had  worked  very  rapidly  over 


58       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

a  very  varied  field  of  experience.  The  pure 
doctrine  of  democracy  which  was  a  rehgion 
to  many  of  his  contemporaries,  with  all  the 
consequences  of  a  religion,  he  had  never 
thought  of  accepting.  But  certain  conse- 
quences of  the  proposed  reforms  strongly 
appealed  to  him.  He  loved  to  be  rid  of  mean- 
ingless and  dead  barriers,  privileges  which 
no  longer  corresponded  to  real  social  differ- 
ences, old  traditions  in  the  management  of 
trade  which  no  longer  corresponded  to  the 
economic  circumstances  of  his  time,  and 
(this  is  the  pivotal  point)  the  fossils  of  an  old 
religious  creed  which,  like  nearly  all  of  his 
rank,  he  simply  took  for  granted  to  be  dead : 
for  Mirabeau  was  utterly  divorced  from  the 
Catholic  Church. 

Much  has  been  said  and  will  be  said  in 
these  pages  concerning  the  religious  quarrel 
which,  though  men  hardly  knew  it  at  the 
time,  cut  right  across  the  revolutionary 
effort,  and  was  destined  to  form  the  lasting 
line  of  cleavage  in  French  life.  There  will 
be  repeated  again  and  again  what  has 
already  been  written,  that  a  reconciliation 
between  the  Catholic  Church  and  the 
reconstruction  of  democracy  was,  though 
men  did  not  know  it,  the  chief  temporal 
business  of  the  time,  and  the  reader  of  these 
pages  will  be  made  well  acquainted  in  them 
with  the  degradation  to  which  religion  had 
fallen  among  the  cultivated  of  that  generation. 
But  in  the  case  of  Mirabeau  this  absence  of 
religion  must  be  particularly  insisted  upon. 
It  would  no  more  have  occurred  to  Mirabeau 


THE   CHARACTERS  59 

that  the  CathoHc  Faith  had  a  future  than  it 
could  occur  to  (let  us  say)  an  English  politician 
of  thirty  years  ago  that  the  Irish  might  become 
a  wealthy  community  or  that  an  English 
Government  might  within  his  own  lifetime 
find  itself  embarrassed  for  money.  I  use  this 
parallel  for  the  sake  of  strengthening  my 
contention,  but  it  is  indeed  a  weak  parallel. 
No  contemporary  parallel  in  our  strange 
and  rapidly  changing  times  corresponds  to 
the  fixed  certitude  which  permeated  the  whole 
of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  that 
the  Catholic  Faith  was  dead.  Mirabeau  had 
perhaps  never  engaged  in  his  life  in  intimate 
conversation  a  single  man  who  took  the 
Catholic  sacraments  seriously,  or  suffered  a 
moment's  anxiety  upon  the  tenets  of  the 
creed. 

He  knew,  indeed,  that  certain  women  and 
a  much  smaller  number  of  insignificant  men 
wrapped  themselves  up  in  old  practices  of  an 
odd,  superstitious  kind  ;  he  knew  that  great, 
dull  areas  of  ignorant  peasantry,  in  proportion 
to  their  poverty  and  isolation,  repeated  by 
rote  the  old  formulae  of  the  Faith.  But  of 
the  Faith  as  a  living  thing  he  could  have  no 
conception. 

He  saw  on  the  one  hand  a  clerical  institution, 
economic  in  character,  providing  places  and 
revenues  for  men  of  his  own  rank;  he  met  those 
men  and  never  discovered  them  to  have  any 
religion  at  all.  He  saw  on  the  other  hand  a 
proposed  society  in  which  such  a  fossil,  unjust 
and  meaningless,  must  relinquish  its  grip 
upon  those  large  revenues.     But  of  the  Faith 


60       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

as  a  social  force,  as  a  thing  able  to  revive,  he 
could  have  no  conception.  It  would  have 
seemed  to  him  a  mere  folly  to  suggest  that  the 
future  might  contain  the  possibility  of  such 
a  resurrection.  The  dissolution  of  the  religi- 
ous orders,  which  was  largely  his  work,  the 
civil  constitution  of  the  clergy  which  he  pre- 
sided over,  were  to  him  the  most  natural  acts 
in  the  world.  They  were  the  mere  sweeping 
away  of  a  quantity  of  inorganic  stuff  which 
cumbered  the  modern  State.  He  felt  of  them 
as  we  might  feel  of  the  purchase  of  waste 
spaces  in  our  cities,  or  the  confiscation  of  some 
bad  landlords'  property  in  them.  The  Church 
served  no  kind  of  purpose,  no  one  who  counted 
believed  in  it,  it  was  defended  only  by  people 
who  enjoyed  large  revenues  from  the  survival 
of  what  had  once  been,  but  was  now  no  longer, 
a  living,  social  function. 

In  everything  of  the  Revolution  which  he 
understood  Mirabeau  was  upon  the  side  of 
caution.  He  w^as  not  oblivious  to  the  concep- 
tion of  popular  government,  he  was  not  even 
mistrustful  of  it,  but  he  could  not  conceive 
of  it  save  as  acting  through  the  established 
strength  of  the  wealthier  classes.  Of  military 
power  he  judged  very  largely  through  Prussian 
eyes.  And  in  long  and  enthusiastic  passages 
he  described  the  Prussian  army  as  invincible. 
Had  he  lived  to  see  the  military  enthusiasm 
of  the  Republicans  he  would  utterly  have 
distrusted  it.  He  favoured  in  his  heart 
an  aristocratic  machinery  of  society — though 
not  an  aristocratic  theory  of  the  State;  he 
was    quite    determined    to    preserve    as    a 


I 


THE   CHARACTERS  01 

living  but  diminished  national  organ  the 
traditional  monarchy  of  France;  he  was 
curious  upon  a  number  of  details  which  were 
present  and  close  to  his  eyes :  methods 
of  voting,  constitutional  checks,  commercial 
codes  and  the  rest  of  it.  The  little  equili- 
briums of  diplomacy  interested  him  also,  and 
the  watching  of  men  immediately  under  his 
eye  in  the  Parliament. 

It  was  in  the  Parliament  that  his  whole 
activity  lay,  it  was  there  that  he  began  to 
guide  the  Revolution,  it  was  his  absence  from 
the  Parliament  after  his  death  that  the  Revolu- 
tion most  feels  in  the  summer  of  1791. 

This  very  brief  sketch  does  not  present 
Mirabeau  to  the  reader.  He  can  only  be 
properly  presented  in  his  speeches  and  in  the 
more  rhetorical  of  his  documents.  It  is  prob- 
able as  time  proceeds  that  his  reputation  in 
this  department  will  grow.  His  constitutional 
ideas,  based  as  they  were  upon  foreign  institu- 
tions, and  especially  upon  the  English  of  that 
time,  were  not  applicable  to  his  own  people 
and  are  now  nearly  forgotten  :  he  was  wrong 
upon  English  politics  as  he  was  wrong  upon 
the  German  armies,  but  he  had  art  over  men 
and  his  personality  endures  and  increases  with 
time. 

LA   FAYETTE 

The  character  of  La  Fayette  has  suffered 
chiefly  from  his  own  aloofness  towards  his 
contemporaries  on  the  one  hand,  and  from 
his  rigid  adherence  to  principle  upon  the  other. 
Both  these  causes  are  clearly  connected.     The 


62       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

same  quality  in  him  which  made  him  so 
tenacious  of  principle  made  him  contemptuous 
of  the  run  of  men  about  him.  Fundamentally, 
he  was  nearer  the  extreme  Republicans  than 
any  other  class,  from  the  very  fact  of  his 
possessing  a  clear  political  creed  and  a  deter- 
mination to  follow  it  out  to  its  logical  conse- 
quence. But  there  was  no  chance  of  his 
comprehending  the  concrete  side  of  the  move- 
ment or  the  men  engaged  upon  it,  for  his  great 
wealth,  inherited  in  very  early  life,  had  cut 
him  off  from  experience.  His  moral  fault 
was  undoubtedly  ambition.  It  was  an  ambi- 
tion which  worked  in  the  void,  as  it  were, 
and  never  measured  itself  with  other  men's 
capacities  or  opportunities.  He  made  no 
plans  for  advancement,  not  because  he  would 
have  despised  the  use  of  intrigue  in  reason,  but 
because  he  was  incapable  of  working  it.  He 
was  exceedingly  attached  to  popularity,  when 
it  came  he  thought  it  his  due  ;  unpopularity 
in  its  turn  seemed  to  him  a  proof  of  the 
vileness  of  those  who  despised  him.  He  made 
himself  too  much  the  measure  of  his  world. 

Undoubtedly  a  very  great  part  in  the  mould- 
ing of  his  character  proceeded  from  his  experi- 
ence in  the  United  States  of  America.  He 
was  then  at  the  most  impressionable  and 
formative  period  of  human  life,  little  more  than 
a  boy,  or  at  least  just  entering  early  manhood. 
He  had  just  married,  he  had  just  come  into 
the  administration  of  his  vast  fortune.  At 
such  a  moment  he  took  part  in  the  victorious 
rebellion  of  the  English  colonies,  and  it  may 
be  imagined  how  powerful  was  the  effect  of 


THE   CHARACTERS  63 

this  youthful  vision  upon  the  whole  of  the 
man's  future  life;  because  there  was  no  prole- 
tariat in  the  colonies,  he  never  saw  or  compre- 
hended the  dispossessed  classes  of  Paris — for 
that  matter  he  never  saw  or  comprehended  the 
French  peasantry  upon  his  own  lands  ;  be- 
cause a  chance  and  volunteer  soldiery  had, 
under  the  peculiar  conditions  of  the  half- 
populated  Atlantic  seaboard  in  conjunction 
with  the  French  fleet  and  with  the  aid  of 
French  money  and  arms,  got  the  better  of 
the  small  and  heterogeneous  forces  of  George 
III,  he  believed  that  a  military  nation  like  the 
French,  in  the  midst  of  powerful  enemies, 
could  make  something  of  an  amateiu'  civic 
force  ;  because  a  certain  type  of  ease  in  social 
relations  was  the  ideal  of  many,  perhaps  of 
most,  of  those  with  whom  he  had  served  in 
America,  he  confused  so  simple  and  mundane 
an  ideal  with  the  fierce  crusading  blast  and 
the  sacred  passion  for  equality  which  was 
stirring  his  own  nation  when  his  oppor- 
tunity for  leadership  came. 

It  may  be  said  of  La  Fayette  with  justice 
that  he  never  upon  a  single  occasion  did  the 
right  thing.  It  may  also  be  said  with  justice 
that  he  never  did  politically  any  major  thing 
for  which  his  own  conscience  would  later 
reproach  him.  It  is  noticeable  that  the  Queen 
held  him  in  particular  odium.  He  had  been 
a  wealthy  young  noble  about  the  Court,  the 
friend  of  all  her  women  friends,  and  his  sym- 
pathy with  the  revolutionary  movement  at 
its  inception  therefore  seemed  to  her  nothing 
better  than  treason.     There  was  also  undoubt- 


64       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

edly  something  in  his  manner  which  grievously 
repelled  her  ;  that  it  was  self-sufficient  we 
cannot  doubt,  and  that  it  was  often  futile  and 
therefore  exasperating  to  women,  events  are 
sufficient  to  show.  But  Marie  Antoinette's  vio- 
lent  personal  antagonism  towards  La  Fayette 
was  not  common,  though  several  ardent 
spirits  (Danton's,  for  instance)  shared  it. 
The  mass  of  those  who  came  across  La  Fayette 
felt  in  connection  with  him  a  certain  irritation 
or  a  certain  contempt  or  a  certain  rather 
small  and  distant  respect ;  he  inspired  no 
enthusiasms,  and  when  he  timidly  attempted 
a  rebellion  against  the  new  Government  after 
the  fall  of  the  monarchy,  no  one  would  sacri- 
fice himself  or  follow  him. 

It  may  be  affirmed  of  La  Fayette  that  if  he 
had  not  existed  the  Revolution  would  have 
pursued  much  the  same  course  as  it  did,  with 
this  exception :  that  there  would  not  have  been 
formed  a  definitely  middle  class  armed  guard 
to  provoke  friction  in  Paris  :  the  National 
Guard  would  have  been  more  open  to  all  ranks. 

In  religion  the  man  was  anodyne,  Catholic 
of  course  by  baptism,  but  distinctly  Pro- 
testant in  morals  and  in  general  tone,  in 
dogma  (until  the  end  of  his  life)  freethinking, 
of  course,  like  all  his  contemporaries.  He  was 
personally  courageous  but  foolishly  despised 
the  duel.  One  anecdote  out  of  many  will 
help  to  fix  his  nature  in  the  mind  of  the 
reader.  Mirabeau,  casting  about  as  usual  for 
aid  in  his  indebtedness,  sent  urgently  to 
hini  as  to  a  fellow  noble,  a  fellow  politician 
and  a  fellow  supporter  of  the  Crown,  begging 


i 


THE   CHARACTERS  65 

a  loan   of  £2000.     La  Fayette  accorded  him 
£1000. 

DUMOURIEZ 

Dumouriez  presents  a  character  particularly 
difficult  for  the  modern  Englishman  to  com- 
prehend, so  remote  is  it  in  circumstance  and 
fundamentals  from  those  of  our  time. 

Of  good  birth,  but  born  in  a  generation 
when  social  differences  had  become  a  jest  for 
intelligent  and  active  men  (and  he  was  intelli- 
gent and  active),  courageous,  with  a  good  know- 
ledge of  his  trade  of  soldiering,  of  rapid  deci- 
sion and  excellent  judgment  where  troops  or 
terrain  were  concerned,  he  was  all  at  sea  in 
the  comprehension  of  men,  and  he  bore  no 
loyalty  to  the  State. 

It  is  this  last  feature  which  will  particularly 
surprise  the  English  reader,  for  it  is  the 
singular  and  permanent  advantage  of  oli- 
garchic communities  such  as  the  British 
that  they  retain  under  any  stress  and  show 
throughout  the  whole  commonwealth  the 
sense  of  the  State.  To  betray  the  State, 
to  act  against  its  interests,  to  be  imperfectly 
conscious  of  its  existence,  are  crimes  or  weak- 
nesses unknown  to  the  citizens  of  an  oligarchy, 
and  a  citizen  of  this  country  cannot  easily 
conceive  of  them  to-day.  In  democracies  and 
despotisms,  on  the  other  hand,  to  forget  one's 
duty  to  the  State,  to  be  almost  oblivious  of 
its  corporate  existence,  is  a  connnon  weakness. 
There  is  here  a  compensation,  and  by  just  so 
much  as  despotism  and  democracy  permit 
rapid,  effective  and  all-compelling  action  on 

0 


66      THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

the  part  of  the  State,  by  just  so  much  as  they 
permit  sudden  and  sometimes  miraculous 
enthusiasms  which  save  or  which  confirm  a 
State,  by  that  also  do  they  lack  the  quiet  and 
persistent  consciousness  of  the  State  which 
oligarchy  fosters  and  determines. 

Dumouriez'  excellence  as  a  general  can  only 
be  appreciated  by  those  who  have  looked 
closely  into  the  constitution  of  the  forces 
which  he  was  to  command  and  the  adversaries 
with  whom  he  had  to  deal.  It  is  the  prime 
quality  of  a  great  commander  that  his  mind 
stands  ready  for  any  change  in  circumstances 
or  in  the  material  to  his  hand,  and  even  when 
we  have  allowed  for  the  element  of  luck  which 
is  so  considerable  in  military  affairs,  we  must 
not  forget  that  Dumouriez  saved  without 
disaster  the  wretched  and  disorganised  bands, 
inchoate  and  largely  mutinous  as  to  their  old 
units,  worthless  and  amateur  as  to  their  new, 
which  had  to  meet,  in  and  behind  the  Argonne, 
the  model  army  of  Prussia. 

We  must  not  forget  that  his  plan  for  the 
invasion  of  the  Low  Countries  was  a  just  and 
sensible  one,  nor  with  what  skill,  after  the 
inevitable  defeat  and  retreat  of  the  spring  of 
1793,  he  saved  his  command  intact. 

As  a  subordinate  to  an  armed  executive, 
to  the  Government  of  Napoleon,  for  instance, 
the  man  would  have  been  priceless.  Nay,  had 
circumstances  permitted  him  to  retain  supreme 
command  of  civil  as  of  military  power,  he 
would  have  made  no  bad  dictator.  His  mere 
technical  skill  was  so  considerable  as  to  make 
the   large  sums   paid    him    by   the   English 


THE   CHARACTERS  67 

Government  seem  a  good  bargain  even  at  our 
distance  of  time,  and  his  plans  for  the  defence 
of  England  and  for  the  attack  on  Napoleon  are 
a  proof  of  the  value  at  which  he  was  estimated. 

But  Dumouriez  was  quite  unable  to  act 
under  the  special  circumstances  in  which  he 
happened  to  be  placed  at  the  moment  of  his 
treason.  A  mere  ambition  had  carried  him 
from  intrigue  to  intrigue  among  the  politicians. 
He  despised  them  as  an  active  and  capable 
soldier  was  compelled  to  despise  them  ;  he 
was  too  old  to  share  any  of  their  enthusiasms, 
even  had  his  temperament  permitted  him  to 
entertain  any  vision,  political  or  religious. 
He  certainly  never  felt  the  least  moral  bond 
attaching  him  to  what  was  in  his  eyes  the 
chance  anarchy  of  the  last  six  months  of 
French  Government  under  which  he  served, 
and  if  he  is  to  be  branded  with  the  title  of 
traitor,  then  we  must  brand  with  the  same 
title  all  that  multitude  of  varied  men  who 
escaped  from  the  country  in  the  Emigration, 
who  left  it  in  disgust,  or  even  who  remained 
in  France,  but  despaired  of  French  fortunes,  in 
the  turmoil  of  1793. 

It  is  perhaps  a  worthy  excuse  for  Du- 
mouriez' failure  to  point  out  that  he  also  was 
one  of  those  whom  the  Court  might  have 
used  had  it  known  how  to  use  men  ;  but  the 
Court  had  no  such  knowledge. 

DANTON 

The  character  of  Danton  has  more  widely 
impressed  the  world  than  that  of  any  other 

C  2 


68      THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

revolutionary  leader,  because  it  contained 
elements  permanently  human,  independent 
of  the  democratic  theory  of  the  time,  and 
necessary  neither  to  the  support  of  that 
theory  nor  to  the  criticism  of  it. 

The  character  of  Danton  appeals  to  that 
sense  in  man  which  is  interested  in  action, 
and  which  in  the  field  of  letters  takes  the 
form  of  drama.  His  vigour,  his  personal 
strength  of  mind  and  body,  the  individuality 
of  his  outline,  arrest  equally  the  man  who  loves 
the  Revolution,  and  the  man  who  hates  it,  and 
the  man  who  is  quite  indifferent  to  its  success 
or  failure. 

It  is  on  this  very  account  that  historians, 
especially  foreign  historians,  have  tended  to 
misinterpret  the  man.  Thus  Carlyle,  who 
has  great  intuition  in  the  matter,  yet  makes 
him  out  farmer-like — ^which  he  certainly  was 
not  ;  Michelet,  fascinated  by  his  energy, 
presents  him  as  something  uncouth,  and  in 
general  those  who  would  describe  Danton 
stand  at  a  distance,  as  it  were,  where  his 
loud  voice  and  forcible  gesture  may  best  be 
appreciated;  but  a  man  to  be  seen  truly  must 
be  seen  in  intimacy. 

Danton  was  essentially  a  compound  of  two 
powerful  characters  in  man.  He  was  amative 
or  constructive,  and  at  the  same  time  he  not 
only  possessed  but  liked  to  exercise  lucidity 
of  thought.  The  combination  is  among  the 
strongest  of  all  those  that  go  to  build  up 
human  personalities. 

That  which  was  amative  and  constructive 
in  him,  his  virility  if  you  will,  brought  him 


THE   CHARACTERS  G9 

into  close  touch  with  reaHty  ;  he  knew  and 
loved  his  own  country,  for  instance,  and 
infinitely  preferred  its  happy  survival  to  the 
full  development  of  any  political  theory.  He 
also  knew  and  loved  his  fellow  countrymen  in 
detail  and  as  persons;  he  knew  what  made 
a  Frenchman  weak  and  what  made  him  strong. 
The  vein  of  Huguenotry,  though  he  did  not 
know  it  for  what  it  was,  he  disliked  in  his 
compatriots.  On  the  other  hand,  the  salt 
and  freshness  of  the  French  was  native  to 
him  and  he  delighted  in  it ;  the  freedom  of 
their  expression,  the  noise  of  their  rhetoric, 
and  the  military  subsoil  of  them,  were  things 
to  all  of  which  he  immediately  responded.  He 
understood  their  sort  of  laughter,  nor  was  he 
shocked,  as  a  man  less  national  would  have 
been,  at  their  peculiarly  national  vices,  and  in 
especial  their  lapses  into  rage.  It  is  this 
which  must  account  for  what  all  impartial 
judgment  most  blames  in  him,  which  is,  his  in- 
difference to  the  cruelties,  his  absorbed  interest 
in  foreign  and  military  affairs,  at  the  moment 
of  the  Massacres  of  September. 

This  touch  with  reality  made  him  under- 
stand in  some  fashion  (though  only  from  with- 
out) the  nature  of  the  Germans.  The  foolish 
mania  of  their  rulers  for  mere  territorial 
expansion  unaccompanied  by  persuasion  or 
the  spread  of  their  ideas,  he  comprehended. 
The  vast  superiority  of  their  armies  over  the 
disorganised  forces  of  the  French  in  1792  he 
clearly  seized :  hence  on  the  one  hand  his  grasp 
of  their  foreign  policy,  and  on  the  other  his 
able  negotiation  of  the  retreat  after  Valmy. 


70       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

He  also  understood,  however,  and  more  pro- 
foundly, the  rapid  self-organisation  of  which 
his  own  countrymen  were  capable,  and  it  was 
upon-  this  knowledge  that  his  determination 
to  risk  the  continuance  of  the  war  reposed.  It 
should  be  remarked  that  both  in  his  military 
and  in  his  quasi-military  action  he  was  himself 
endowed  in  a  singular  degree  with  that  power 
of  inmiediate  decision  which  is  characteristic 
of  his  nation. 

His  lucidity  of  thought  permitted  him  to 
foresee  the  consequences  of  many  a  revolu- 
tionary decision,  and  at  the  same  time  in- 
clined him  to  a  strong  sympathy  with  the 
democratic  creed,  with  the  doctrine  of  equality, 
and  especially  with  the  remoulding  of  the 
national  institutions — particularly  his  own 
profession  of  the  law — upon  simple  lines.  He 
was  undoubtedly  a  sincere  and  a  convinced 
revolutionary,  and  one  whose  doctrine  more 
permeated  him  than  did  that  of  many  of  his 
contemporaries  their  less  solid  minds.  He 
was  not  on  that  account  necessarily  republican. 
Had  some  accident  called  his  genius  into  play 
earlier  in  the  development  of  the  struggle,  he 
might  well,  like  Mirabeau,  with  whom  he 
presents  so  curious  a  parallel,  have  thought  it 
better  for  the  country  to  save  the  Monarchy. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  he 
was  a  man  of  wide  culture  and  one  who  had 
achieved  an  early  and  satisfactory  professional 
success  ;  he  was  earning  a  sound  income  at 
the  moment  of  his  youthful  marriage;  he  read 
English  largely  and  could  speak  it.  His  dress 
was  not  inexpensive,  and  though  somewhat 


THE   CHARACTERS  71 

disordered  (as  it  often  is  with  men  of  intense 
energy  and  constant  gesture)  it  never  gave  an 
impression  of  carelessness  or  disarray.  He 
had  many  and  indifferent  intellectual  interests, 
and  was  capable,  therefore,  of  intelligent 
application  in  several  fields.  He  appreciated 
the  rapid  growth  of  physical  science,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  complexity  of  the  old  social 
conditions — too  widely  different  from  contem- 
porary truths. 

To  religion  he  was,  of  course,  like  all  men 
of  that  time,  utterly  indifferent,  but  unlike 
many  of  them  he  seized  the  precise  proportion 
of  its  remaining  effect  upon  certain  districts 
and  certain  sections  of  the  countrysides. 
There  has  been  a  tendency  latterly  to  exagger- 
ate the  part  which  Freemasonry  played  in  the 
launching  of  him;  he  was  indeed  a  member  of 
a  masonic  lodge,  as  were,  for  that  matter,  all 
the  men,  conspicuous  or  obsciwe,  democratic 
or  utterly  reactionary,  who  appeared  upon  the 
revolutionary  stage :  probably  the  king,  cer- 
tainly old  aristocrats  like  the  father  of  Madame 
de  Lamballe,  and  the  whole  host  of  the  middle 
class,  from  men  like  Bailly  to  men  like  Con- 
dorcet.  But  it  is  reading  history  backwards, 
and  imagining  the  features  of  our  own  time 
to  have  been  present  a  century  ago,  to  make 
of  Masonry  the  determining  element  in  his 
career. 

Danton  failed  and  died  from  two  combined 
causes :  first  his  health  gave  way,  secondly  he 
obtruded  his  sanity  and  civilian  sense  into  the 
heated  fury  and  calculated  martial  law  of  the 
second  year  of  the  Republic.     To  both  that 


72       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

fury  and  that  calculation  he  was  an  obstacle  ; 
his  opposition  to  the  Terror  lost  him  the  sup- 
port of  the  enthusiasts,  but  it  was  the  inter- 
ference which  such  a  judgment  made  in  the 
plans  of  the  soldiers,  and  notably  of  Carnot, 
that  determined  his  condemnation  and  death. 
He  also,  like  Mirabeau,  will  undoubtedly  in- 
crease as  the  years  proceed,  and,  if  only  as 
a  representative  of  the  national  temper, 
become  more  and  more  the  typical  figure 
of  the  Revolution  in  action. 

CARNOT 

Carnot,  the  predecessor  of  Napoleon,  and 
the  organising  soldier  of  the  early  revolution- 
ary wars,  owed  his  power  to  backbone. 

He  had  not  only  a  good  solidity  of  brain, 
but  an  astonishing  power  of  using  it  for  hours 
and  hours  on  end.  This  he  owed  perhaps  to 
the  excellent  physical  stock  of  which  he  came, 
the  eldest  of  a  very  large  family  born  to  a 
notable  lawyer  in  Burgundy. 

It  was  Carnot's  pride  to  hold  a  commission 
in  the  learned  arms  which  were  to  transform 
at  that  moment  the  art  of  war  :  for  as  Bona- 
parte, his  successor,  was  a  gunner,  so  he  was  a 
sapper.  His  practice  of  exact  knowledge  in 
application,  and  the  liberal  education  which 
his  career  demanded,  further  strengthened 
the  strong  character  he  had  inherited.  More 
important  still,  in  his  democratic  views  he 
was  what  none  of  the  older  officers  had  been, 
convinced  and  sincere.  He  had  not  come 
within  the  influence  of  the  very  wealthy  or  of 


THE   CHARACTERS  73 

the  very  powerful.  He  was  young,  and  he 
knew  his  own  mind  not  only  in  matters  of 
political  faith  but  in  the  general  domain  of 
philosophy,  and  in  the  particular  one  of 
military  science. 

It  has  been  said  of  him  that  he  invented 
the  revolutionary  method  of  strategical  con- 
centration and  tactical  massing  in  the  field. 
There  is  some  truth  in  this  ;  but  the  method 
would  not  have  been  possible  had  he  not  also 
invented,  in  company  with  Danton,  and  sup- 
ported after  Danton  left  powxr,  a  universal 
system  of  conscription. 

Carnot  understood,  as  only  trained  soldiers 
can,  the  value  of  numbers,  and  he  depended  with 
great  sagacity  upon  the  national  temper;  thus 
at  Wattignies,  which  was  a  victory  directly 
due  to  his  genius,  though  it  was  novel  in  him 
to  have  massed  troops  suddenly  upon  the 
right  after  a  check  on  the  extreme  left  of  the 
field,  yet  the  novelty  would  have  been  of  no 
effect  had  he  not  comprehended  that,  with  his 
young  fellow  countrymen  as  troopers,  he  could 
depend  upon  a  charge  delivered  after  thirty- 
six  hours  of  vigil. 

He  used  not  only  the  national  but  also  the 
revolutionary  temper  in  war.  One  of  the  chief 
features,  for  instance,  of  the  revolutionary 
armies  when  they  began  to  be  successful,  was 
the  development  of  lines  of  skirmishers  who 
pushed  out  hardily  before  the  main  bodies 
and  were  the  first  in  the  history  of  modern 
warfare  to  learn  the  use  of  cover.  This  de- 
velopment was  spontaneous  :  it  was  produced 
within  and  by  each  unit,  not  by  any  general 


74       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

command.      But    Carnot    recognised    it    at 
Hoondschoote  and  used  it  ever  after. 

The  stoical  inflexibility  of  his  temper  is  the 
noblest  among  the  many  noble  characters  of 
his  soul.  He  never  admitted  the  empire,  and 
he  suffered  exile,  seeming  thereby  in  the  eyes 
of  the  vilest  and  most  intelligent  of  his  con- 
temporaries, Fouch6,  to  be  a  mere  fool.  He 
was  as  hard  with  himself  as  with  others,  wholly 
military  in  the  framework  of  his  mind,  and  the 
chief  controller  of  the  Terror,  which  he  used, 
as  it  was  intended  to  be  used,  for  the  military 
salvation  of  the  republic. 


MARAT 

Marat  is  easily  judged.  The  complete 
sincerity  of  the  enthusiast  is  not  difficult  to 
appreciate  when  his  enthusiasm  is  devoted 
to  a  simple  human  ideal  which  has  been,  as 
it  were,  fundamental  and  common  to  the 
human  race. 

Equality  within  the  State  and  the  govern- 
ment of  the  State  by  its  general  will  :  these 
primal  dogmas,  on  the  reversion  to  which  the 
whole  Revolution  turned,  were  Marat's  creed. 

Those  who  would  ridicule  or  condemn  him 
because  he  held  such  a  creed,  are  manifestly 
incapable  of  discussing  the  matter  at  all. 
The  ridicule  and  condemnation  under  which 
Marat  justly  falls  do  not  attach  to  the  patent 
moral  truths  he  held,  but  to  the  manner  in 
which  he  held  them.  He  did  not  only  hold 
them  isolated  from  other  truths — it  is  the 


THE   CHARACTERS  75 

fault  of  the  fanatic  so  to  hold  any  truth — 
but  he  held  them  as  though  no  other  truths 
existed.  And  whenever  he  found  his  ideal 
to  be  in  practice  working  at  a  friction  or 
stopped  dead,  his  unnourished  and  acute 
enthusiasms  at  once  sought  a  scapegoat,  dis- 
covered a  responsible  agent,  and  suggested 
a  violent  outlet,  for  the  delay. 

He  was  often  right  when  he  denounced 
a  political  intriguer  :  he  often  would  have 
sacrificed  a  victim  not  unjustly  condemned, 
he  often  discovered  an  agent  partially  re- 
sponsible, and  even  the  violent  solutions  that 
he  suggested  were  not  always  impracticable. 
But  it  was  the  prime  error  of  his  tortured 
mind  that  beyond  victims,  and  sudden 
violent  clutches  at  the  success  of  democracy, 
there  was  nothing  else  he  could  conceive.  He 
was  incapable  of  allowing  for  imperfections, 
for  stupidities,  for  the  misapprehension  of  mind 
by  mind,  for  the  mere  action  of  time,  and  for 
all  that  renders  human  life  infinitely  complex 
and  infinitely  adjustable. 

Humour,  the  reflection  of  such  wisdom, 
he  lacked; — "judgment"  (as  the  English 
idiom  has  it)  he  lacked  still  more — if  a 
comparative  term  may  be  attached  to  two 
such  absolute  vacuities. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  so  complete 
an  absence  of  certain  necessary  qualities  in 
the  building  up  of  a  mind  are  equivalent  to 
madness.  Marat  was  not  sane.  His  insanity 
was  often  generous,  the  creed  to  which  it  was 
attached  was  obvious  enough,  and  in  the 
eyes    of    most    of    us   it    is   a   creed   to   be 


76       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

accepted.  But  he  worked  with  it  as  a 
madman  who  is  mad  on  collectivism,  let  us 
say,  or  the  rights  of  property,  might  work  in 
our  society,  thinking  of  his  one  thesis,  shrieking 
it  and  foaming  at  the  mouth  upon  it,  losing 
all  control  when  its  acceptance  was  not  even 
opposed  but  merely  delayed.  He  was  value- 
less for  the  accomplishment  of  the  ends  of 
the  Revolution.  His  doctrine  and  his  adher- 
ence to  it  were  so  conspicuously  simple  and 
sincere  that  it  is  no  wonder  the  populace 
made  him  (for  a  few  months)  a  sort  of  symbol 
of  their  demand. 

For  the  rest,  his  face,  like  his  character, 
was  tortured;  he  carried  with  him  a  disease 
of  the  skin  that  irritated  perpetually  his 
wholly  unbalanced  temper. 

Some  say  (but  one  must  always  beware  of 
so-called  "  Science  "  in  the  reading  of  history) 
that  a  mixture  of  racial  types  produced  in 
him  a  perpetual  physical  disturbance :  his 
face  was  certainly  distorted  and  ill-balanced — 
but  physical  suggestions  of  that  sort  are  very 
untrustworthy. 

Those  who  met  him  in  the  management  of 
affairs  thought  him  worthless  enough;  a  few 
who  knew  him  intimately  loved  him  dearly; 
more  who  came  across  him  continually  were 
fatigued  and  irritated  by  his  empty  violence. 
He  was,  among  those  young  revolutionaries, 
almost  an  elderly  man  ;  he  was  (this  should 
never  be  forgotten)  a  distinguished  scholar 
in  his  own  trade,  that  of  medicine;  and  he 
effected  less  in  the  Revolution  than  any 
man  to  whom  a  reputation  of  equal  promi- 


THE   CHARACTERS  77 

nence  happened  to  attach.     He  must  stand 
responsible  for  the  massacres  of  September.^ 


ROBESPIERRE 

No  character  in  the  Revolution  needs  for  its 
comprehension  a  wider  reading  and  a  greater 
knowledge  of  the  national  character  than 
Robespierre's. 

Upon  no  character  does  the  comprehension 
of  the  period  more  depend,  and  none  (for 
reasons  I  will  give  in  a  moment)  has  been 
more  misunderstood,  not  only  in  the  popular 
legend  but  in  the  weighed  decisions  of  com- 
petent historians. 

So  true  is  this  that  even  time,  which  (in 
company  with  scholarship)  usually  redresses 
such  errors,  has  not  yet  permitted  modem 
authors  to  give  a  true  picture  of  the  man. 

The  reason  of  so  conspicuous  a  failure  in 
the  domain  of  history  is  this  :  that  side  by  side 
with  the  real  Robespierre  there  existed  in 
the  minds  of  all  his  contemporaries  save  those 
who  actually  came  across  him  in  the  functions 
of  government,  a  legendary  Robespierre  —  a 
Robespierre  popularly  imagined  ;  and  that 
this  imaginary  Robespierre,  while  it  (or  he) 
has  proved  odious  to  posterity,  seemed,  while 
he  lived,  a  fascinating  portrait  to  the  man 
himself,  and  therefore  he  accepted  it.  For 
Robespierre,  though  just,  lacked  humility. 

^  There  is  but  one  trustworthy  monograph  on  Marat. 
It  will  interest  the  student  as  a  proof  of  the  enthusiasm 
which  Marat  can  inspire.     It  is  by  Champfleurv, 


78      THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  problem  is  an  exceedingly  subtle  as  well 
as  an  exceedingly  difficult  one.  The  historian, 
as  he  reads  his  authorities,  has  perpetually  to 
distinguish  between  what  is  strong  and  what 
is  weak  evidence,  and  to  recall  himself,  as  he 
reads,  to  reality  by  a  recollection  of  what 
Robespierre  himself  was.  If  he  does  not  do 
so  he  falls  at  once  into  the  legend;  so  powerful 
is  that  legend  in  the  numbers  that  supported 
it,  and  so  strongly  did  Robespierre  himself 
support  it  by  his  own  attitude.  The  legendary 
Robespierre  may  be  described  in  a  very  few 
lines. 

Conceive  a  man  sincerely  convinced  of  the 
purest  democratic  theory,  a  man  who  cared 
for  nothing  else  but  the  realisation  of  that 
theory,  and  who  had  never  sacrificed  his 
pursuit  of  its  realisation  in  the  State  to  any 
personal  advantage  whatsoever.  This  man, 
trusted  by  the  people  and  at  last  idolised  by 
them,  becomes  more  and  more  powerful.  He 
enters  the  governing  body  (the  Committee 
of  Public  Safety),  he  is  the  master  both  within 
and  without  that  body,  and  uses  his  mastery 
for  establishing  an  ideal  democracy  which  shall 
recognise  the  existence  of  God  and  repose  upon 
civic  virtue;  and  to  establish  this  ideal  he  has 
recourse  to  terror.  He  finds  that  human 
defections  from  his  ideal  are  increasingly 
numerous  :  he  punishes  them  by  death.  The 
slaughter  grows  to  be  enormous;  the  best  of 
Democrats  are  involved  in  it ;  at  last  it  can  be 
tolerated  no  longer,  his  immediate  subordi- 
nates re  olt  against  him  in  the  Committee, 
he  is  outlawed,  fails  to  raise  a  popular  rebellion 


THE   CHARACTERS  79 

in  his  favour  in  Paris,  is  executed,  and  liis 
system  of  terror  falls  to  the  ground. 

This  picture,  though  purely  legendary  in 
tone,  contains  not  only  much  truth,  but  truth 
of  precisely  that  sort  which  conspires  to  make 
credible  what  is  false  in  the  whole. 

Robespierre  was  sincerely  attached  to  the 
conception  of  an  ideal  democracy;  he  was 
incorruptible  in  the  pursuit  of  it — and  to  be 
a  politician  and  incorruptible  amounts  to 
something  like  what  the  Church  calls  heroic 
virtue  in  a  man.  He  did  enter  the  Committee 
of  Public  Safety;  he  did  support  the  Terror, 
and  when  he  was  overthrown  the  Terror 
did  come  to  an  end.  Where,  then,  does  the 
legend  differ  from  the  truth  ? 

In  these  capital  points,  which  change  it 
altogether :  that  Robespierre  was  not  the 
chief  influence  in  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety,  i.  e.  the  all  powerful  executive  of  the 
Republic;  that  he  did  not  desire  the  Terror, 
that  he  did  not  use  it,  that  he  even  grew  dis- 
gusted with  it,  and  that,  in  general,  he  was 
never  the  man  who  governed  France. 

It  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  how  such 
a  truth  destroys  such  a  legend.  The  whole 
nature  of  the  twelve  months  between  the 
summer  of  1793  and  the  summer  of  1794 
must  vary  according  as  we  regard  them  as 
Robespierrean  or  no :  and  they  w^ere  not 
Robespierrean. 

What  were  they  then,  and  why  has  the 
error  that  Robespierre  was  then  master, 
arisen  ? 

Those  months,  which  may  be  roughly  called 


80       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  months  of  the  Terror,  were,  as  we  shall 
see  later  in  this  book,  months  of  martial 
law;  and  the  Terror  was  simply  martial  law 
in  action — a  method  of  enforcing  the  military 
defence  of  the  country  and  of  punishing  all 
those  who  interfered  with  it  or  were  supposed 
by  the  Committee  to  interfere  with  it. 

No  one  man  in  the  Committee  was  the 
author  of  this  system,  but  the  one  most 
determined  to  use  it  and  the  one  who  had 
most  occasion  to  use  it,  was  undoubtedly 
the  military  organiser,  Carnot.  Side  by  side 
with  him  one  man,  such  as  Barrere,  sup- 
ported it  because  it  kept  up  the  Committee 
of  Public  Safety  which  gave  him  all  his 
political  position.  Another,  such  as  Saint- Just, 
supported  it  because  he  believed  that  the 
winning  of  the  war  (in  which  he  took  an 
active  part)  would  secure  democracy  every- 
where and  for  ever.  Another,  such  as  Jean 
Bon,  supported  it  from  the  old  sectarian  bitter- 
ness of  the  Huguenot.  But  of  all  men  in  the 
Committee,  Robespierre  supported  the  Terror 
least,  and  was  most  suspected  by  his  colleagues 
— and  increasingly  suspected  as  time  went 
on — of  desiring  to  interfere  with  the  martial 
system  of  the  Terror  and  to  modify  it. 

Why,  then,  was  Robespierre  popularly 
identified  with  the  Terror,  and  why,  when 
he  was  executed,  did  the  Terror  cease  ? 

Robespierre  was  identified  with  the  Terror 
because  he  was  identified  with  the  popular 
clamour  of  the  time,  with  the  extreme  demo- 
cratic feeling  of  the  time,  and  its  extreme  fear 
of  a  reaction.     Robespierre  being  the  popular 


THE   CHARACTERS  81 

idol,  had  become  also  the  symbol  of  a  popular 
frenzy  which  was  supposed  to  be  ruling  the 
country.  But  that  frenzy  was  not  ruling  the 
country.  What  was  ruling  the  country  was 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  in  which 
Carnot's  was  the  chief  brain.  Robespierre 
was  indeed  the  idol  of  the  populace;  he  was 
in  no  way  the  agent  of  their  power  or  of 
any  power. 

Why,  when  he  fell,  did  the  Terror  cease  if 
he  were  not  its  author  ?  Because  the  Terror 
was  acting  under  a  strain;  it  was  with  the 
utmost  difficulty  that  this  absolute,  intolerant 
and  intolerable  martial  system  could  be 
continued  when  once  the  fear  of  invasion 
was  removed.  For  some  weeks  before  Robes- 
pierre fell  the  victories  had  begun  to  render 
it  unnecessary.  When  the  Committee  saw 
to  it  that  Robespierre  should  be  outlawed  by 
the  Parliament,  they  knocked  away,  w^ithout 
knowing  it,  the  keystone  of  their  own  policy; 
it  was  his  popular  position  which  made  their 
policy  possible.  When  he  was  destroyed 
they  suddenly  found  that  the  Terror  could  no 
longer  be  maintained.  Men  had  borne  with 
it  because  of  Robespierre,  falsely  imagining 
that  Robespierre  had  desired  it.  Robespierre 
gone,  men  w^ould  not  bear  with  it  any  more. 

Now,  finally,  if  Robespierre  himself  had 
always  felt  opposed  to  the  system  of  the 
Terror,  why  did  he  not  take  the  lead  in  the 
popular  reaction  against  it  ? 

He  had  his  opportunity  given  him  by 
Danton  in  December  1793 — seven  months 
before  his  own  catastrophe.     The  Committee 


82       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

determined  to  put  Danton  out  of  the  way 
because  Danton,  in  appealing  for  mercy, 
was  weakening  the  martial  power  of  their 
government.  Robespierre  might  have  saved 
Danton  :  he  preferred  to  let  him  be  sacrificed. 
The  reason  was  that  Robespierre  wrongly 
believed  popularity  to  lie  upon  the  side  of 
the  Terror  and  against  Danton;  he  was  in 
no  way  a  leader  (save  in  rhetoric  and  in 
rhetoric  directed  towards  what  men  already 
desired),  and  his  own  great  weakness  or  vice 
was  the  love  of  popular  acclaim. 

Later  on,  in  the  summer  of  1794,  when  he 
actually  began  to  move  against  the  Terror, 
he  only  did  so  privately.  He  so  misread 
men  that  he  still  believed  the  Terror  to  be 
popular,  and  dared  not  lose  his  popular 
name.  A  man  by  nature  as  sincere  as  crystal, 
he  was  tempted  to  insincerity  in  this  major 
thing,  during  the  last  months  of  his  life,  and 
he  yielded  completely  to  the  temptation. 
For  the  sake  of  his  memory  it  was  deplorable, 
and  deplorable  also  for  history.  His  weak- 
ness has  been  the  cause  of  an  historical  error 
as  grave  as  any  that  can  be  discovered  in 
modern  letters,  and  at  the  same  time  has 
wholly  maligned  him  to  posterity. 

A  factor  in  Robespierre's  great  public 
position  which  is  often  forgotten  is  the  great 
effect  of  his  speeches.  That  men  should 
still  debate,  after  so  vast  a  change  in  taste, 
whether  those  speeches  were  eloquent  or  no, 
is  a  sufficient  proof  of  their  effect.  He  spoke 
in  an  ordered  and  a  reasoned  manner,  which 
bored  the  fine  spirits  of  the  earlier  Parliaments, 


THE   PHASES  83 

but  well  suited  the  violent  convictions  of  the 
later  Revolution.  His  phraseology,  his  point 
of  view,  just  jumped  with  that  of  his  audience. 
He  could  express  what  they  felt,  and  express 
it  in  terms  which  they  knew  to  be  exact, 
and  which  they  believed  to  be  grand.  For 
his  manner  was  never  excessive,  and  those 
excessive  men  w^ho  heard  him  in  an  excessive 
mood,  were  proud  to  know  that  their  violence 
could  be  expressed  with  so  much  scholarship 
and  moderated  skill. 

By  birth  he  was  of  the  smaller  gentry, 
though  poor.  It  is  an  indication  of  his  char- 
acter that  he  had  thought  of  taking  Orders, 
and  that  in  early  youth  literary  vanity  had 
affected  him.  He  has  left  no  monument; 
but  from  the  intensity  of  his  faith  and  from 
his  practice  of  it,  his  name,  though  it  will 
hardly  increase,  will  certainly  endure. 


IV 

THE    PHASES    OF   THE    REVOLUTION 

I 

From  May  1789  to  17th  of  July  1789. 

The  first  point  which  the  reader  must  hold 
in  the  story  of  the  Revolution  is  the  quarrel 
between  its  first  Parliament  and  the  Crown, 

Of  what  nature  was  that  quarrel  ? 

It  was  not,  as  it  has  sometimes  been  repre- 
sented, a  simple  issue  between  privilege  and 


84       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

a  democratic  demand  for  equality,  or  between 
traditional  organs  of  government  and  a  de- 
mocratic demand  for  self-government  by  the 
nation.  To  imagine  this  is  to  read  history 
backwards,  and  to  see  in  the  untried  condi- 
tions of  1789  the  matured  results  which  only 
appeared  after  years  of  struggle. 

The  prime  issue  lay  between  legality  and 
illegality. 

The  forms  of  French  law  and  all  the  in- 
herited method  of  French  administration 
demanded  a  certain  form  of  authority :  a 
centralised  government  of  unlimited  power. 
The  King  was  absolute.  From  him  proceeded 
in  the  simplest  fashion  whatever  will  was 
paramount  in  the  State.  He  could  suspend 
a  debtor's  liabilities,  imprison  a  man  without 
trial,  release  him  without  revision  of  his  case, 
make  war  or  peace,  and  in  minor  details  such 
as  the  discipline  and  administration  of  public 
bodies,  the  power  of  the  Crown  was  theoreti- 
cally and  legally  equally  supreme.  It  was 
not  exercised  as  the  enormous  power  of 
modern  government  is  exercised,  it  did  not 
perpetually  enter  into  every  detail  of  the  life  of 
the  poor  in  the  way  in  which  the  power  of  a 
modern  English  Government  enters  into  it; 
it  is  in  the  very  nature  of  such  autocratic 
power  that,  while  unlimited  in  theory,  it  is 
compelled  to  an  instinctive  and  perpetual  self- 
limitation  lest  it  break  down;  and  autocracy 
maybe  compared  in  this  to  aristocracy,  or  more 
properly  speaking  to  oligarchy,  the  govern- 
ment of  a  few  :  for  where  a  few  govern  they 
know   that   their   government   reposes  upon 


THE   PHASES  85 

public  opinion  or  public  tolerance  ;  they  are 
very  careful  not  to  exceed  certain  limits  the 
transgression  of  which  would  weaken  the 
moral  foundation  of  their  power  ;  they  wel- 
come allies,  they  recruit  themselves  perpetually 
from  other  classes  in  the  community. 

In  the  same  way  an  autocracy  always  has 
the  desire  to  be  popular.  Its  strokes  affect 
the  great  and  the  powerful,  and  are  hardly 
ever  aimed  at  the  mass  of  the  communitv. 
The  intellectual,  the  wealthy,  the  privileged 
by  birth,  fortune  or  exceptional  personal 
powers,  are  suspect  to  it.  As  for  the  mass 
of  men  an  Autocracy  attempts  to  represent 
and,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  obey  them 

Now  the  French  autocracy  (for  it  was  no 
less)  erred  not  in  the  will  to  act  thus  popu- 
larly in  the  early  part  of  the  Revolution,  but 
in  the  knowledge  requisite  for  such  action. 

The  Parliament,  shortly  after  it  had  met 
in  May  1789,  began  to  show,  in  the  Commons 
part  of  it,  the  working  of  that  great  theory 
which  had  leavened  all  France  for  a  genera- 
tion. The  Commons  said,  "  We  are  the 
people;  at  once  the  symbols  of  the  people, 
the  direct  mandatory  servants  of  the  people, 
and"  (though  this  was  a  fiction)  "we  are  of 
the  people  in  our  birth  and  origin.  We  are 
therefore  the  true  sovereign;  and  the  prince, 
the  head  of  the  Executive,  is  no  more  than 
an  organ  of  government,  morally  less  in 
authority  than  ourselves,  who  are  the  true 
source  of  government."  This  attitude,  which 
was  at  the  back  of  all  men's  minds,  and 
which    was    concentrated,  of    course,  in  the 


86       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Commons,  clashed  with  legality.  It  could  not 
express  itself  in  the  terms  of  law,  it  could  not 
act  save  in  a  fashion  which  should  be,  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  word,  revolutionary. 

Now  the  Crown,  on  the  whole  national 
in  sympathy,  and  comprehending  this  new 
theory  well  (I  mean  by  the  Crown  the  general 
body  of  advisers  round  the  King,  and  the 
King  himself),  was  offended  at  the  illegality 
not  of  the  theory  or  of  the  pretence  (for  these 
were  not  illegal),  but  of  the  action  of  the 
Commons.  And  this  comparatively  small 
source  of  friction  was  the  irritant  upon  which 
we  must  fix  as  the  cause  of  what  followed. 
The  Nobles,  by  108  to  47,  decided,  the  day 
after  the  opening  of  the  Parliament,  to  sit 
as  a  separate  House.  The  Clergy,  by  a  much 
smaller  majority,  133  to  114,  came  to  the 
same  decision,  but  carefully  qualified  it  as 
provisional.  The  Commons  declared  that 
the  hall  in  which  they  met  should  be  regarded 
as  the  hall  of  the  National  Assembly,  and 
later  made  it  their  business  (to  quote  the 
phrase  of  the  motion)  "  to  attempt  to  unite 
in  common  all  the  deputies  of  the  nation 
in  that  hall  and  never  to  abandon  the  prin- 
ciple of  voting  individually  "  (that  is,  not  by 
separate  Houses)  "  or  the  principle  that  the 
States-General  formed  one  undivided  body." 
This  attitude  was  qualified  and  compromised 
with  to  some  extent  in  the  days  that  fol- 
lowed, but  it  held  the  field,  and  while  the 
Commons  were  insisting  upon  this  attitude 
as  a  moral  right,  the  Nobles  countered  by  a 
reafiirmation  of  the  right  of  each  House  to  a 


THE   PHASES  87 

separate  judgment  upon  public  matters.  The 
Nobles  were  standing  upon  legal  precedent : 
the  Commons  had  nothing  in  their  favour  but 
political  theory;  if  the  orders  sat  all  together 
and  voted  as  individuals,  the  Commons, 
who  were  in  number  equal  to  the  two  other 
Houses  combined,  would,  with  their  noble  and 
clerical  sympathisers,  have  a  majority. 

Now  the  King  and  his  advisers,  notably 
Necker,  who  still  had  great  weight,  were  by 
no  means  "  Impossiblists  "  in  this  struggle. 
They  desu^ed  an  understanding,  and  through 
the  last  days  of  May  and  the  first  days  of 
June  the  attempt  at  an  understanding  was 
made.  But  the  attempt  dragged,  and  as 
it  seemed  that  nothing  would  come  of  it, 
on  the  10th  of  June  Sieyes  moved  that 
the  Assembly  should  "  verify  its  powers " 
(a  French  phrase  for  admitting  and  register- 
ing the  presence  of  each  member  as  ac- 
ceptable to  the  whole  body,  and  to  the  theory 
of  its  Constitution),  and  that  this  should  be 
done  "  in  the  case  of  each  member  "  (meaning 
members  of  all  the  three  orders  and  not  of 
the  Commons  alone),  "  whether  the  members 
of  the  two  privileged  Houses  were  present 
or  absent."  The  roll  was  called  and  com- 
pleted upon  the  15th.  None  of  the  nobles 
attended  the  common  roll-call,  three  of  the 
parish  clergy  (they  were  from  the  province 
of  Poitou)  did  so,  and  thus  admitted  the  right 
of  the  Commons  so  to  act.  A  dozen  of  their 
colleagues  joined  them  later  ;  but  that  was  all. 

So  far  there  had  been  no  action  which 
could   be   precisely   called   illegal   or  revolu- 


88       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

tionary.  The  Commons  had  affirmed  a  right 
based  upon  a  political  theory  which  the  vast 
majority  of  the  nation  admitted,  and  the 
legal  depositary  of  power,  the  King,  had  not 
yet  reproved.  One  may  draw  a  parallel 
and  compare  the  action  of  the  Commons  so 
far  to  some  action  which  a  trade  union,  lor 
instance,  may  take  in  England;  some  action 
the  legality  of  which  is  doubtful  but  upon 
which  the  courts  have  not  yet  decided. 

It  was  upon  the  17th  of  June,  two  days 
after  the  completion  of  the  roll-call  by  the 
Commons,  that  the  first  revolutionarv  act 
took  place,  and  the  student  of  the  Revolu- 
tion will  do  well  to  put  his  finger  upon  that 
date  and  to  regard  it  not  indeed  as  the  moral 
origin  of  the  movement,  but  as  the  precise 
moment  from  which  the  Revolution,  as  a 
Revolution,  begins  to  act.  For  upon  that  day 
the  Commons,  though  in  fact  only  joined  by 
a  handful  of  the  Clerical  House,  and  by  none 
of  the  nobility,  declared  themselves  to  be  the 
National  Assembly;  that  is,  asserted  the  fic- 
tion that  Clergy,  Nobles  and  Commons  were 
all  present  and  voted  together.  To  this 
declaration  they  added  a  definite  act  of 
sovereignty  which  trespassed  upon  and  con- 
tradicted the  legal  authority  of  the  Crown. 
True,  the  motion  was  only  moved  and  passed 
"  provisionally,"  but  the  words  used  were 
final,  for  in  this  motion  the  self-styled 
"  National  Assembly  "  declared  that  "  pro- 
visionally "  taxes  and  dues  might  be  raised 
upon  the  old  authority  but  that  only  until 
the     National     Assembly     should     disperse; 


THE   PHASES  89 

"  after  which  day  " — and  here  we  reach  the 
sacramental  formula,  as  it  were,  of  the  crisis 
— "  the  National  Assembly  wills  and  decrees 
that  all  taxes  and  dues  of  whatever  nature 
which  have  not  been  specifically  formally 
and  freely  granted  by  the  said  Assembly 
shall  cease  in  every  province  of  the  kingdom 
no  matter  how  such  that  province  may  be 
administered."  (This  is  an  allusion  to  the 
fact  that  in  some  provinces  there  was  a  repre- 
sentative machinery,  in  others  nothing  but 
the  direct  action  of  the  Crown.)  ''  The 
Assembly  declares  that  when  it  has  in  concert 
with  (not  in  obedience  to)  the  King  laid  down 
the  principle  of  a  national  re-settlement,  it 
will  busy  itself  with  the  examination  and 
ordering  of  the  public  debt."     Etc.,  etc. 

Such  was  the  point  of  departure  after 
which  sovereignty  was  at  issue  between  the 
Crown  and  the  States-General ;  the  Crown  a 
known  institution  with  its  traditions  stretch- 
ing back  to  the  Roman  Empire,  and  the 
National  Assembly  a  wholly  new  organ  ac- 
cording to  its  own  claims,  basing  its  authority 
upon  a  political  theory  stretching  back  to  the 
very  origins  of  human  society. 

Two  days  later,  on  the  19th  of  June,  the 
"  National  Assembly,"  still  only  self-styled 
and  possessing  only  the  powers  which  it  had 
ascribed  to  itself  beyond  all  forms  of  law, 
set  to  work,  nominated  its  committees,  and 
assumed  the  sovereignty  thus  claimed.  The 
Nobles  protested  (notably  the  Bishops),  and 
the  King,  on  the  advice  of  Barentin,  keeper 
of   the   Seals,    determined   upon   immediate 


90       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

resistance.  The  excuse  was  taken  that  the 
Royal  Session,  as  it  was  called,  in  which  the 
King  would  declare  his  will,  needed  the  pre- 
paration of  the  hall,  and  when  the  Commons 
presented  themselves  at  the  door  of  that  hall 
on  the  next  day,  the  20th,  they  found  it  shut 
against  them.  They  adjourned  to  a  neigh- 
bouring tennis  court,  and  took  a  solemn 
corporate  oath  that  they  would  not  separate 
without  giving  France  a  Constitution.  They 
continued  to  meet,  using  a  church  for  that 
purpose,  but  on  the  23rd  the  Royal  Session 
was  opened  and  the  King  declared  his  will. 

The  reader  must  especially  note  that  even 
in  this  crisis  the  Crown  did  not  offer  a  'com- 
plete resistance.  There  was  an  attempt  at 
compromise.  Necker  would  have  had  a 
more  or  less  complete  surrender,  the  Queen 
and  her  set  would  have  preferred  an  act  of 
authority  which  should  have  annulled  all 
that  the  Commons  had  done.  What  actually 
happened  was  a  permission  by  the  Crown 
that  the  three  Orders  should  meet  as  one  body 
for  certain  common  interests,  but  should 
preserve  the  system  of  voting  as  separate 
Houses  in  *'  all  that  might  regard  the  ancient 
and  constitutional  rights  of  the  three  Orders, 
the  Constitution  to  be  given  to  futm-e  Par- 
liaments, feudal  property,  and  the  rights 
and  prerogatives  of  the  two  senior  Houses." 
As  a  mere  numerical  test,  such  a  conclusion 
would  have  destroyed  the  power  of  the 
Conmions,  since,  as  we  have  seen,  numbers  were 
the  weapon  of  the  Commons,  who  were  equal 
to  the  two  other  Houses  combined,  and  if  all 


THE   PHASES  91 

sat  together  would,  with  the  Liberal  members 
of  the  clergy  and  the  nobility,  be  supreme. 
But  apart  from  this  numerical  test,  the  act 
of  sovereignty  affirmed  by  the  National 
Assembly  when  it  declared  itself,  and  itself 
only,  competent  to  vote  taxes,  was  annulled. 
Moreover,  the  royal  declaration  ended  with 
a  conamand  that  on  the  next  day  the  three 
Orders  should  meet  separately. 

Now  at  this  critical  point  the  King  was 
disobeyed.  The  current  of  the  time  chose 
the  revolutionary  bed,  and  as  it  began  to 
flow  deepened  and  confirmed  its  course 
with  every  passing  day  and  event.  Already 
the  majority  of  the  clergy  had  joined  the 
National  Assembly  when  it  had  affirmed 
its  right  to  sit  in  spite  of  the  check  of  the 
20th  of  June.  There  was  a  half-hour  on 
that  decisive  day  of  the  Royal  Session,  the 
28rd  of  June,  when  armed  force  might  have 
been  used  for  the  arrest  and  dispersion  of 
the  Deputies.  They  declared  themselves  in- 
violable and  their  arrest  illegal,  but  there 
was,  of  course,  no  sanction  for  this  decree. 
As  a  fact,  not  a  corporal's  file  was  used  against 
them.  The  next  day,  the  24th,  the  majority 
of  the  clergy  again  joined  the  Commons 
in  their  session  (in  flat  defiance  of  the  King's 
orders),  and  on  the  25th,  forty-seven  of  the 
nobles  followed  their  example.  The  King 
yielded,  and  on  the  27th,  two  days  later, 
ordered  the  three  Houses  to  meet  together. 

The  National  Assembly  was  now  legally 
constituted,  and  set  out  upon  its  career. 
The  Crown,  the  old  centre  of  authority,  had 


92       THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

abandoned  its  position,  and  had  confirmed  the 
Revolution,  but  in  doing  so  it  had  acted  as 
it  were  in  contradiction  with  itself.  It  had 
made  technically  legal  an  illegality  which 
destroyed  its  own  old  legal  position,  but  it 
had  done  so  with  ill-will,  and  it  was  evident 
that  some  counter-stroke  would  be  attempted 
to  restore  the  full  powers  of  the  Crown. 

At  this  point  the  reader  must  appreciate 
what  forces  were  face  to  face  in  the  coming 
struggle.  So  far,  the  illegal  and  revolutionary 
act  of  the  17th  of  June,  the  Royal  Session 
which  replied  to  that  act  upon  the  23rd,  the 
King's  decree  which  yielded  to  the  Commons 
upon  the  27th,  had  all  of  them  been  but  words. 
If  it  came  to  action,  what  physical  forces 
were  opposed  ? 

On  the  side  of  the  Crown  was  the  organised 
armed  force  which  it  commanded.  For  it 
must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  Crown  was 
the  Executive,  and  remained  the  Executive 
right  on  to  the  capture  of  the  palace  three 
years  later,  and  tne  consummation  of  the 
Revolution  on  the  10th  of  August,  1792.  On 
the  side  of  the  National  Assembly  was  without 
doubt  the  public  opinion  of  the  country  (but 
that  is  not  a  force  that  can  be  used  under 
arms),  and,  what  was  much  more  to  the 
point,  the  municipal  organisation  of  France. 

Space  forbids  a  full  description  of  the 
origins  and  strength  of  the  French  municipal 
system;  it  is  enough  to  point  out  that  the 
whole  of  Gallic  civilisation,  probably  from  a 
moment  earlier  than  Cgesar's  invasion,  and 
certainly  from  the  moment  when  Roman  rule 


THE  PHASES  08 

was  paramount  in  Gaul,  was  a  municipal 
one.  It  is  so  still.  The  countrysides  take 
their  names  mainly  from  their  chief  towns. 
The  towns  were  the  seats  of  the  bishops, 
whose  hierarchy  had  preserved  whatever 
could  be  preserved  of  the  ancient  world.  In 
the  towns  were  the  colleges,  the  guilds,  the 
discussion  and  the  corporations  which  built 
up  the  life  of  the  nation.  The  chief  of  these 
towns  was  Paris.  The  old  systems  of  muni- 
cipal government,  corrupt  and  varied  as  they 
were,  could  still  give  the  towns  a  power  of 
corporate  expression.  And  even  where  that 
might  be  lacking  it  was  certain  that  some 
engine  would  be  found  for  expressing  muni- 
cipal action  in  a  crisis  of  the  sort  through 
which  France  was  now  passing.  In  Paris, 
for  instance,  it  was  seen  when  the  time  came 
for  physical  force  that  the  College  of  Electors, 
who  had  chosen  the  representatives  for  that 
city,  were  willing  to  act  at  once  and  spontane- 
ously as  a  municipal  body  which  should  ex- 
press the  initiative  of  the  people.  It  was  the 
towns,  and  especially  Paris,  prompt  at  spon- 
taneous organisation,  ready  to  arm,  and  when 
armed  competent  to  frame  a  fighting  force, 
which  was  the  physical  power  behind  the 
Assembly. 

What  of  the  physical  power  behind  the 
King  ?  His  power  was,  as  we  have  said,  the 
Regular  Armed  forces  of  the  country :  the 
army.  But  it  is  characteristic  of  the  moment 
that  only  a  part  of  that  armed  force  could  be 
trusted.  For  an  army  is  never  a  mere  weapon : 
it  consists  of  living  men;  and  though  it  will 


94       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

act  against  the  general  opinion  of  its  members 
and  will  obey  orders  long  after  civilians 
would  have  broken  with  the  ties  of  technical 
and  legal  authority,  yet  there  is  for  armies 
also  a  breaking  point  in  those  ties,  and  the 
Crown,  I  repeat,  could  not  use  as  a  whole  the 
French-speaking  and  French -born  soldiery. 
Luckily  for  it,  a  very  great  proportion  of  the 
French  army  at  that  moment  consisted  of 
foreign  mercenaries. 

Since  the  position  was  virtually  one  of  war, 
we  must  consider  what  was  the  strategical 
object  of  this  force.  Its  object  was  Paris, 
the  chief  of  the  towns;  and  round  Paris,  in  the 
early  days  of  July,  the  mercenary  regiments 
were  gathered  from  all  quarters.  That  military 
concentration  once  effected,  the  gates  of  the 
city  held,  especially  upon  the  north  and  upon 
the  west,  by  encamped  regiments  and  by  a 
particularly  large  force  of  cavalry  (ever  the 
arm  chosen  for  the  repression  of  civilians), 
the  Crown  was  ready  to  act. 

On  the  11th  of  July,  Necker,  who  stood 
for  Liberal  opinions,  was  dismissed.  A  new 
ministry  was  formed,  and  the  counter-revolu- 
tion begun.  What  followed  was  the  immediate 
rising  of  Paris. 

The  news  of  Necker's  dismissal  reached  the 
masses  of  the  capital  (only  an  hour's  ride 
from  Versailles)  on  the  afternoon  of  the  12th, 
Sunday.  Crowds  began  to  gather;  an  in- 
effectual cavalry  charge  in  one  of  the  outer 
open  spaces  of  the  city  only  inflamed  the 
popular  enthusiasm,  for  the  soldiers  who 
charged    were    German    mercenary    soldiers 


THE  PHASES  95 

under  the  command  of  a  noble.  Public 
forces  were  at  once  organised,  arms  were 
commandeered  from  the  armourers'  shops, 
the  Electoral  College,  which  had  chosen  the 
members  of  the  Assembly  for  Paris,  took 
command  at  the  Guild  Hall,  but  the  capital 
point  of  the  insurrection — what  made  it 
possible — was  the  seizure  of  a  great  stock  of 
arms  and  ammunition,  including  cannon,  in 
the  depot  at  the  Invalides. 

With  such  resources  the  crowd  attacked,  at 
the  other  end  of  the  city,  a  fortress  and  arsenal 
which  had  long  stood  in  the  popular  eye  as 
the  symbol  of  absolute  monarchy,  the  Bastille. 
With  the  absurdly  insufficient  garrison  of  the 
Bastille,  its  apparent  impregnability  to  any- 
thing the  mob  might  attempt,  the  supposed 
but  doubtful  treason  of  its  governor  in  firing 
upon  those  whom  he  had  admitted  to  parley, 
we  are  not  here  concerned.  The  Bastille  was 
rushed,  after  very  considerable  efforts  and 
an  appreciable  loss  in  killed  and  wounded. 
By  the  evening  of  that  day,  Tuesday,  the 
14th  of  July,  1789,  Paris  had  become  a  formid- 
able instrument  of  war.  The  next  news  was 
the  complete  capitulation  of  the  King. 

He  came  on  the  morrow  to  the  National 
Assembly,  promising  to  send  away  the  troops ; 
he  promised  to  recall  Necker,  a  municipal 
organisation  was  granted  to  the  city,  with 
Bailly  for  its  first  mayor,  and — a  point  of 
capital  importance — an  armed  militia  depen- 
dent upon  that  municipality  was  legally 
formed,  with  La  Fayette  at  its  head.  On  the 
17th  Louis  entered  Paris  to  consummate  his 


I 


96       THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

capitulation,  went  to  the  Guild  Hall,  appeared 
in  the  tricoloured  cockade,  and  the  popular 
battle  was  won. 

It  behoves  us  here  to  consider  the  military 
aspect  of  this  definitive  act  from  which  the 
sanction  of  the  Revolution,  the  physical 
power  behind  it,  dates. 

Paris  numbered  somewhat  under  a  million 
souls  :  perhaps  no  more  than  600,000  :  the 
number  fluctuated  with  the  season.  The 
foreign  mercenary  troops  who  were  mainly 
employed  in  the  repression  of  the  popular 
feeling  therein,  were  not  sufficient  to  impose 
anything  like  a  siege.  They  could  at  the 
various  gates  have  stopped  the  provisioning 
of  the  city,  but  then  at  any  one  of  those 
separate  points,  any  one  of  their  detachments 
upon  a  long  perimeter  more  than  a  day's 
march  in  circumference  would  certainly  have 
been  attacked  and  almost  as  certainly  over- 
whelmed by  masses  of  partially  armed  civilians. 

Could  the  streets  have  been  cleared  while 
the  ferment  was  rising  ?  It  is  very  doubtful. 
They  were  narrow  and  tortuous  in  the  extreme, 
the  area  to  be  dealt  with  was  enormous,  the 
tradition  of  barricades  not  forgotten,  and  the 
spontaneous  action  of  that  excellent  fighting 
material  which  a  Paris  mob  contains,  had 
been  quite  as  rapid  as  anything  that  could 
have  been  effected  by  military  orders. 

The  one  great  fault  was  the  neglect  to  cover 
the  Invalides,  but  even  had  the  Invalides  not 
been  looted,  the  stock  of  arms  and  powder 
in  the  city  would  have  been  sufficient  to  have 
organised  a  desperate  and  prolonged  resistance. 


THE  PHASES  97 

The  local  auxiliary  force  (of  slight  mili- 
tary value,  it  is  true),  the  "  French  Guards," 
as  they  were  called,  were  wholly  with  the 
people.  And  in  general,  the  Crown  must 
be  acquitted  of  any  considerable  blunder  on 
the  military  side  of  this  struggle.  It  certainly 
did  not  fail  from  lack  of  will. 

The  truth  is  (if  we  consider  merely  the 
military  aspect  of  this  military  event)  that  in 
dealing  with  large  bodies  of  men  who  are 
(a)  not  previously  disarmed,  (b)  under  con- 
ditions where  they  cannot  be  dispersed,  and 
(c)  capable  by  a  national  tradition  or  character 
of  some  sort  of  rapid,  spontaneous  organisa- 
tion, the  issue  will  always  be  doubtful,  and 
the  uncertain  factor  (which  is  the  tenacity, 
decision  and  common  will  of  the  civilians,  to 
which  soldiers  are  to  be  opposed)  is  one  that 
varies  within  the  very  widest  limits. 

In  massing  the  troops  originally,  the  Crown 
and  its  advisers  estimated  that  uncertain 
factor  at  far  too  low  a  point.  Even  con- 
temporary educated  opinion,  which  was  in 
sympathy  with  Paris,  put  it  too  low.  That 
factor  was,  as  a  fact,  so  high  that  no  armed 
force  of  the  size  and  quality  which  the 
Crown  then  disposed  of,  could  achieve  its 
object  or  hold  down  the  capital. 

As  for  the  absurd  conception  that  any  body 
of  men  in  uniform,  however  small,  could  always 
have  the  better  of  civilian  resistance,  however 
large  and  well  organised,  it  is  not  worthy  of 
a  moment's  consideration  by  those  who 
interest  themselves  in  the  realities  of  military 
history.     It  is  worthy  only  of  the  academies. 

D 


98       THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

So  ends  the  first  phase  of  the  Revolution. 
It  had  lasted  from  the  opening  of  the  States- 
General  in  May  to  the  middle  of  July  1789. 


II 

From  the  17th  of  July  1789  to  the  Gth  of  Oct.  1 789. 

We  have  seen  the  military  conditions  under 
which  the  attempt  at  an  armed  counter- 
revolution failed.  There  follows  a  short 
phase  of  less  than  three  months,  whose 
character  can  be  quickly  described. 

It  was  that  moment  of  the  Revolution  in 
which  ideas  had  the  freest  play,  in  which 
least  had  been  done  to  test  their  application, 
and  most  scope  remained  for  pm'e  enthusiasm. 
That  is  why  we  find  in  the  midst  of  that 
short  phase  the  spontaneous  abandonment  of 
the  feudal  rights  by  the  nobility.  And  that 
is  why  the  violent  uprisings  all  over  France 
continued.  It  is  the  period  in  which  the 
Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  of  the 
Citizen,  a  document  which  may  fittingly 
stand  side  by  side  with  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  (for  together  they  form  the 
noblest  monuments  of  our  modern  origins), 
w^as  promulgated.  In  the  same  period  were 
the  elements  of  the  future  Constitution 
rapidly  debated  and  laid  down,  and  notably 
that  national  policy  of  a  Single  Chamber 
which  the  modern  French  have  imprudently 
abandoned.  In  that  same  period,  however, 
appeared,  and  towards  the  close  of  it,  another 
form  of  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  Crown  and 


THE  PHASES  99 

of  those  who  advised  the  Crown.  The  King 
hesitated  to  accept  the  Declaration  of  the 
Rights  of  Man,  and  similarly  hesitated  to 
promulgate  the  Decree  of  the  4th  of  August 
in  which  the  nobility  had  abandoned  their 
feudal  dues.  It  would  be  foolish  to  exaggerate 
the  military  aspect  of  what  followed.  Louis 
did  call  in  troops,  but  only  in  numbers  suffi- 
cient for  personal  defence,  and  we  can  hardly 
believe  that  he  intended  anything  more  than 
to  police  the  surroundings  of  his  throne. 
But  the  brigade  (for  it  was  no  more,  nor  was 
it  of  full  strength)  which  he  summoned  was 
sufficient  to  kindle  suspicion;  and  the  deter- 
minedly false  position  of  the  Queen  (who  all 
her  life  was  haunted  by  the  idea  that  the 
regular  soldiers,  especially  if  they  were  well 
dressed  and  held  themselves  rigidly,  were 
a  sort  of  talisman)  provoked  an  explosion. 
A  feast  was  given  in  which  the  officers  of  the 
Regiment  of  Flanders,  which  had  just  reached 
Versailles,  were  entertained  by  the  officers  of 
the  Guard.  It  was  made  the  occasion  for 
a  good  deal  of  drunkenness  and  a  violent 
Royalist  manifestation,  at  which  the  Queen 
was  present,  which  she  approved,  and  which 
some  thought  she  had  designed. 

The  failure  of  the  harvest  to  relieve  the 
scarcity  of  bread  in  Paris,  the  permanent 
state  of  alarm  in  which  Paris  had  remained, 
and  of  suspicion  for  the  safety  of  the  Parlia- 
ment which  it  continually  entertained  since 
the  early  part  of  the  summer,  needed  no  more 
to  provoke  an  outbreak.  It  is  an  error  tc 
imagine  that  that  outbreak  was  engineered 

D  2 


100     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

or  that  such  a  movement  could  have  been 
factitious.  Great  masses  of  women  (in  whom 
the  movement  originated),  and  after  them  a 
whole  flood  of  the  populace,  marched  upon 
Versailles. 

There  was  no  direct  attack  upon  the  palace, 
though  the  palace  feared  such  an  attack  at 
any  moment.  The  troops  present  were  suffi- 
cient to  prevent  violence. 

La  Fayette  followed  in  the  night  at  the 
head  of  his  new  Parisian  militia  force. 

Too  much  reliance  was  placed  upon  the 
military  character  of  this  force;  the  palace 
was  invaded  in  the  early  morning,  an  attempt 
to  assassinate  the  Queen  on  the  part  of  tlxe 
mob  failed,  though  two  of  the  Guards  were 
killed.  And  after  scenes  whose  violence  and 
apparent  anarchy  only  masked  the  common 
determination  of  the  populace,  the  royal 
family  were  compelled  to  abandon  Versailles 
and  to  take  up  their  place  in  the  Tuileries  ; 
the  Parliament  followed  them  to  Paris,  and 
neither  King  nor  Parliament  returned  again 
to   the  suburban  palace. 

This  recapture  of  the  King  by  Paris  is  much 
more  significant  than  a  mere  impulse  of  the 
mob.  The  King  in  Paris,  the  unison  of  his 
person  with  the  capital  city,  had  been  the 
very  sacrament  of  French  life  for  century 
upon  century.  It  was  precisely  a  hundred 
years  since  Paris  had  been  abandoned  by 
Louis  XIV  for  Versailles.  The  significance 
of  that  error  may  be  understood  by  the 
citizens  of  an  aristocratic  country  if  they  will 
imagine  the  abandonment  of  their  country- 


THE  PHASES  101 

sides  by  the  squires,  or,  again,  the  future 
historian  of  our  modern  industrial  civih'sation 
may  understand  it  when  he  describes  how  the 
wealthy  manufacturers  abandoned  the  cities 
in  which  their  wealth  was  made,  to  dwell 
outside  and  apart  from  the  living  interests 
of  their  people. 

With  the  return  of  the  royal  family  to 
Paris,  and  with  the  presence  of  the  Assembly 
within  the  heart  of  the  national  life,  one  prime 
factor  appears,  which  is  this  :  that  while  the 
National  Assembly  proceeds  step  by  step  to 
what  it  imagines  to  be  a  complete  attainment 
of  democracy  (though  how  partial  will  soon 
be  seen),  the  resistance  of  the  Crown  is 
transformed  into  a  resistance  of  the  mere 
Court.  The  attack  on  the  Revolution  be- 
comes a  personal  thing.  The  King  is  still 
wholly  the  chief  of  the  Executive;  he  can 
give  what  commands  he  wills  to  the  armed 
force;  he  controls  receipts  and  payments;  he 
is  for  all  active  purposes  the  Government. 
But  he  is  no  longer  considering  that  prime 
function  of  his,  nor  even  using  it  to  restore 
his  old  power.  He  acts  henceforward  as  an 
individual,  and  an  individual  in  danger.  The 
Queen,  whose  view  of  the  Revolution  and  its 
dangers  had  always  been  a  purely  personal 
one,  is  the  directing  will  in  the  court-group 
from  this  moment,  October  1789,  onwards; 
and  the  chief  preoccupation  of  that  group 
for  eighteen  months  is  personal  safety.  Sur- 
rounded by  the  pomp  of  the  Tuileries  and 
amid  all  the  external  appearances  of  a  power 
still  greater  than  that  of  anv  other  monarch 


102     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

in  Europe,  Louis  and  his  wife  and  their  very 
few  immediate  and  devoted  friends  and 
followers  thought  of  the  palace  as  a  prison, 
and  never  considered  their  position  save  as 
one  intolerable, 

III 

From  October  1789  to  June  1791. 

It  is  this  which  must  explain  all  that 
followed  in  the  succeeding  phase,  which  lasted 
from  these  early  days  of  October  1789  to  the 
last  week  of  June  1791.  Throughout  that 
period  of  twenty-one  months  the  King  is 
letting  the  Revolution  take  its  course,  with 
the  fixed  idea  of  thw^arting  it  at  last  by  flying 
from  it,  and  perhaps  conquering  it  by  foreign 
aid.  But  even  this  policy  is  not  consecutively 
followed.  The  increasing  repugnance  of  the 
Court  and  of  the  King  himself  to  the  revolu- 
tionary development  forbids  a  consecutive 
and  purely  hypocritical  acceptation  of  the 
National  Assembly's  decrees. 

Deliberate  and  calculated  intrigue  might 
yet  have  saved  the  monarchy  and  the  persons 
of  the  royal  family.  Oddly  enough,  an  ally  in 
the  struggle,  an  excellent  intriguer,  a  saviour 
of  the  monarchical  institution  and  a  true 
defender  of  the  royal  persons  was  at  hand  : 
it  was  at  hand  in  the  person  of  Mirabeau. 

This  man  had  more  and  more  dominated 
the  Assembly;  he  had  been  conspicuous  from 
its  first  opening  days;  he  had  been  its  very 
voice  in  the  resistance  to  the  King  at  Versailles ; 
it  was  he  who  had  replied  to  the  Master  of 


THE   PHASES  103 

Ceremonies  on  June  23,  that  the  Commons 
would  not  disperse;  it  was  he  who  had  moved 
that  the  persons  of  the  Commons  were  privi- 
leged against  arrest.  He  was  of  a  family 
noble  in  station  and  conspicuous  before  the 
people  by  the  wealth  and  eccentricities  of 
its  head,  Mirabeau's  father.  He  himself  was 
not  unknown  even  before  the  Revolution 
broke  out,  for  his  violence,  his  amours,  his 
intelligence  and  his  debts.  He  was  a  few 
years  older  than  the  King  and  Queen :  his 
personality  repelled  them  ;  none  the  less  his 
desire  to  serve  them  was  sincere;  and  it  was 
his  plan,  while  retaining  the  great  hold  over 
the  National  Assembly  which  his  rhetoric 
and  his  use  of  men  furnished  him,  to  give 
to  the  Court  and  in  particular  to  the  Queen, 
whom  he  very  greatly  and  almost  reverently 
admired,  such  secret  advice  as  might  save 
them.  This  advice,  as  we  shall  see  in  a 
moment,  tended  more  and  more  to  be  an  advice 
for  civil  war.  But  Mirabeau's  death  at  the 
close  of  the  phase  we  are  now  entering  (on 
April  2,  1791),  and  the  increasing  fears  of  the 
King  and  Queen,  between  them  prevented 
any  statesmanship  at  all;  they  prevented 
even  the  statesmanship  of  intrigue;  and  the 
period  became,  on  the  side  of  the  Revolution, 
a  rapid  and  uncontrolled  development  of  its 
democratic  theory  (limited  by  the  hesitation 
of  the  middle  class),  and  on  the  side  of  the 
Court  an  increasing  demand  for  mere  physical 
security  and  flight,  coupled  with  an  increasing 
detennination  to  return,  and  to  restore  as  a 
popular  monarchy  the  scheme  of  the  past 


104     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

The  eighteen  months  that  intervened  be- 
tween the  fixing  of  the  Assembly  and  the 
royal  family  in  Paris,  and  the  death  of  Mira- 
beau,  are  remarkable  for  the  following  points, 
which  must  all  be  considered  abreast,  as  it 
were,  if  we  are  to  understand  their  combined 
effects. 

1.  This  was  the  period  in  which  the  con- 
structive work  of  the  National  Assembly  was 
done,  and  in  which  the  whole  face  of  the 
nation  was  changed.  The  advising  bodies  of 
lawyers  called  "  Parliaments  "  were  abolished 
(eleven  months  after  the  King  had  come 
to  Paris),  the  Modern  Departments  were 
organised  in  the  place  of  the  old  provinces, 
the  old  national  and  provincial  militia  was 
destroyed;  but  (as  it  is  very  important  to 
remember)  the  old  regular  army  was  left 
untouched.  A  new  judicature  and  new  rules 
of  procedure  were  established.  A  new  code 
sketched  out  in  the  place  of  ''  Common  Law  '* 
muddle.  In  a  word,  it  was  the  period 
during  which  most  of  those  things  which  we 
regard  as  characteristic  of  the  revolutionary 
work  were  either  brought  to  their  theoretic 
conclusion  or  given  at  least  their  main  lines. 

2.  Among  these  constructive  acts,  but  so 
important  that  it  must  be  regarded  separately, 
was  the  Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy,  which 
will  be  dealt  with  at  length  further  in  this 
book;  it  v/as  the  principal  work  (and  the 
principal  error)  of  that  year  and  a  half, 

3.  The  general  spirit  of  the  Revolution, 
more  difficult  to  define  than  its  theory  but 
easy  to  appreciate  as  one  follows  the  develop- 


THE   PHASES  105 

ment  of  the  movement,  increased  regularly 
and  enormously  in  intensity  during  the 
period.  The  power  of  the  King,  who  was 
still  at  the  head  of  the  Executive,  acted  more 
and  more  as  an  irritant  against  public  opinion, 
and — 

4.  That  public  opinion  began  to  express 
itself  in  a  centralised  and  national  fashion,  of 
which  the  great  federation  of  the  14th  of 
July  1790,  in  Paris,  on  the  anniversary  of 
the  fall  of  the  Bastille,  was  the  nucleus  and 
also  the  symbol.  This  federation  consisted 
in  delegates  from  the  National  Guard  through- 
out the  country,  and  it  was  of  this  capital 
importance  :  that  it  introduced  into  the 
revolutionary  movement  a  feature  of  soldiery 
which  made  even  the  regular  troops  for  the 
most  part  sympathetic  with  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  time. 

5.  These  eighteen  months  were,  again,  filled 
with  the  movement  of  the  "  Emigration." 
That  movement  was,  of  course,  the  departure 
of  many  of  the  more  prominent  of  the  privi- 
leged orders  and  of  a  crov/d  of  humbler  nobles, 
as  also  of  a  few  ecclesiastics,  from  France. 
The  King's  brothers  (one  fled  at  the  beginning 
of  the  emigration,  the  younger,  the  Comte 
d'Artois;  the  other,  the  elder,  at  its  close, 
and  coincidently  with  the  flight  of  the  King) 
must  especially  be  noted  in  this  connection; 
they  formed  in  company  with  the  more  notable 
of  the  other  emigrants  a  regular  political 
body,  which  intrigued  continually  beyond  the 
frontiers,  in  Germany  and  Italy,  against  the 
Revolution.     And — 


106     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

6,  It  was  therefore  during  these  months 
that  the  ultimate  origins  of  the  large  European 
war  must  be  found.  The  armed  body  of  the 
emigrants  under  Cond6  formed  an  organised 
corps  upon  the  Rhine,  and  though  there  was 
not  yet  the  semblance  of  an  armed  movement 
in  Europe  besides  theirs  against  the  French, 
yet  by  the  emigres^  as  they  were  called,  were 
sown  the  seeds  the  harvest  of  which  was  to 
be  the  war  of  1792. 

I  have  said  that  during  these  months  in 
which  most  of  the  constructive  work  of  the 
Revolution  was  done,  in  which  the  seeds  of 
the  great  war  were  sown,  and  in  which  the 
absolute  position  of  the  Crown  as  the  head  of 
the  Executive  was  increasingly  irritating  to 
the  public  opinion  of  the  French,  and  especi- 
ally of  the  capital,  Mirabeau  was  the  one  man 
who  might  have  preserved  the  continuity 
of  national  institutions  by  the  preservation 
of  the  monarchy.  He  received  money  from 
the  Court  and  in  return  gave  it  advice.  The 
advice  was  the  advice  of  genius,  but  it  was 
listened  to  less  and  less  in  proportion  as  it 
was  more  and  more  practical.  Mirabeau  also 
favoured  the  abandonment  of  Paris  by  the 
King,  but  he  would  have  had  the  King  leave 
Paris  openly  and  with  an  armed  force,  with- 
draw to  a  neighbouring  and  loyal  centre  such 
as  Compiegne,  and  thence  depend  upon  the 
fortunes  of  civil  war. 

Meanwhile  the  Queen  was  determined  upon 
a  very  different  and  much  more  personal 
plan,  into  which  no  conception  of  statesman- 
ship entered.     She  was  determined  to  save 


THE  PHASES  107 

the  persons  of  her  children,  herself  and  her 
husband.  Plans  of  flight  were  made,  post- 
poned and  re-postponed.  It  was  already- 
agreed  at  the  Court  that  not  Mirabeau's 
plan  should  be  followed,  but  this  plan  of  mere 
evasion.  The  army  which  Bouill6  commanded 
upon  the  frontier  was  to  send  small  detach- 
ments along  the  great  road  from  Paris  to  the 
east;  the  first  of  these  were  to  meet  the 
royal  fugitives  a  little  beyond  Chalons  and 
to  escort  their  carriage  eastward;  each  armed 
detachment  in  the  chain,  as  the  flight  pro- 
ceeded, was  to  fall  in  for  its  defence,  until, 
once  the  town  of  Varennes  was  reached,  the 
King  and  Queen  should  be  in  touch  with  the 
main  body  of  the  army. 

What  was  then  intended  to  follow  remains 
obscure.  It  is  fairly  certain  that  the  King 
did  not  intend  to  pass  the  frontier  but  to  take 
refuge  at  Montm6dy.  The  conflict  that  would 
have  inevitably  broken  out  could  hardly 
have  been  confined  to  a  civil  war  :  foreign 
armies  and  the  German  mercenaries  in  the 
French  service  were  presumably  to  be  organ- 
ised, in  case  the  flight  succeeded,  for  a  march 
upon  Paris  and  the  complete  restoration  of 
the  old  state  of  affairs. 

Had  Mirabeau  lived  this  rash  and  unstates- 
manlike  plan  might  yet  have  been  avoided; 
it  so  happened  that  he  died  upon  April  2, 
1791,  and  soon  after  we  enter  the  third  phase 
of  the  Revolution,  which  is  that  leading 
directly  to  the  great  war,  and  to  the  fall  of 
the  monarchy. 

Shortly  after  Mirabeau's  death  a  tumult, 


108     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

which  excessively  frightened  the  royal  family, 
prevented  the  King  and  Queen  from  leaving 
the  palace  and  passing  Easter  at  St.  Cloud, 
in  the  suburbs.  Though  further  postpone- 
ments of  their  flight  followed,  the  evasion 
actually  took  place  in  the  night  of  the  20th 
to  21st  of  June.  It  very  nearly  succeeded, 
but  by  a  series  of  small  accidents,  the  last 
of  which,  the  famous  ride  of  Drouet  to  in- 
tercept the  fugitives,  is  among  the  best-known 
episodes  in  history,  the  King  and  Queen  and 
their  children  were  discovered  and  arrested 
at  Varennes,  within  a  few  hundred  yards  of 
safety,  and  were  brought  back  to  Paris, 
surrounded  by  enormous  and  hostile  crowds. 
With  the  failure  of  this  attempt  at  flight  in 
the  end  of  June  1791,  ends  the  third  phase  of 
the  Revolution. 


IV 

Frovi  June  1791  to  September  179^. 

To  understand  the  capital  effect  both  of 
this  flight  and  of  its  failure,  we  must  once 
more  insist  upon  the  supreme  position  of 
the  monarchy  in  the  traditions  and  instinct 
of  French  polity.  The  unwisdom  of  the 
flight  it  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate : 
it  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  moral 
revolution  caused  by  its  failure.  It  was  re- 
garded as  virtually  an  abdication.  The  strong 
body  of  provincial,  silent,  and  moderate 
opinion,  which  still  centred  on  the  King  and 
regarded  it  as  his  function  to  lead  and  to 


THE   PHASES  109 

govern,  was  bewildered,  and  in  the  main 
divorced,  in  the  future,  from  the  Crown. 

It  is  an  excellent  proof  of  what  the  monarchy- 
had  for  so  long  been  to  France,  that  even  in 
such  a  crisis  barely  the  name  of  "  a  republic  " 
was  mentioned,  and  that  only  in  the  intel- 
lectual circles  in  Paris.  All  the  constitutional 
and  standing  forces  of  society  conspired  to 
preserve  the  monarchy  at  the  expense  of 
no  matter  what  fictions.  The  middle  class 
Militia  Guard  under  La  Fayette  repressed, 
in  what  is  known  as  the  Massacre  of  the 
Champ-de-Mars,  the  beginnings  of  a  popular 
movement.  The  more  Radical  leaders  (among 
whom  was  Danton)  fled  abroad  or  hid.  The 
Duke  of  Orleans  utterly  failed  to  take  advan- 
tage of  the  moment,  or  to  get  himself  pro- 
claimed regent :  the  monarchical  tradition 
was  too  strong. 

Immediately  after  the  second  anniversary 
of  the  taking  of  the  Bastille,  in  July,  the 
decrees  of  Parliament  created  the  fiction 
that  the  King  was  not  responsible  for  the 
flight,  that  he  "  had  been  carried  off,"  and 
in  the  following  September,  though  until 
then  suspended  from  executive  power,  the 
King,  on  taking  the  oath  to  the  Constitution, 
was  once  more  at  the  head  of  all  the  forces 
of  the  nation. 

But  all  this  patching  and  reparation  of 
the  facade  of  constitutional  monarchy  (a 
fiction  whose  tawdriness  is  more  offensive  to 
the  French  temper  than  its  falsehood)  had 
come  too  late.  Already  the  Queen  had 
written    to    her    brother,    the    Emperor    of 


110     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

Austria,  suggesting  the  mobilisation  of  a 
considerable  force,  and  its  encampment  on 
the  frontier,  to  overawe  the  revolutionary 
movement.  Her  action  coincided  within  a 
few  days  with  the  end  of  that  great  Parlia- 
ment, which  had  been  chosen  on  the  most 
democratic  suffrage,  and  which  had  trans- 
formed the  whole  of  society  and  laid  the 
basis  of  the  revolutionary  Constitution.  With 
the  meeting  of  the  National  Assembly's  suc- 
cessor on  the  1st  of  October,  1791,  war  was 
already  possible;  that  possibility  was  to  be 
transformed  very  soon  into  probability,  and 
at  last  into  actuality. 

In  the  new  Parliament  thfe  weight,  not  of 
numbers  but  of  leadership,  fell  to  a  group 
of  enthusiastic  and  eloquent  men  who,  from 
the  fact  that  certain  of  their  principal  members 
came  from  the  Gironde,  were  called  The 
Girondins.  They  represented  the  purest  and 
the  most  enthusiastic  ideal  of  democracy, 
less  national,  perhaps,  than  that  advocated 
by  men  more  extreme  than  they,  but  of  a 
sort  which,  from  that  time  to  this,  has  been 
able  to  rouse  the  enthusiasm  of  historians. 

Vergniaud  and  Isnard  were  their  great 
orators,  Brissot  was  their  intellectual  intriguer, 
and  the  wife  of  Roland,  one  of  their  members, 
was,  as  it  were,  the  soul  of  the  whole  group. 
It  was  the  fact  that  these  men  desired  war 
which  made  war  certain,  once  the  temper  of 
this  new  second  Assembly  should  be  felt. 

The  extremists  over  against  them,  to  whom 
I  have  alluded  (known  as  "  the  Mountain  "), 
were  especially  Parisian  in  character.     Robes- 


THE   PHASES  111 

pierre,  who  had  been  first  an  obscure,  and 
later  a  sectarian  orator  of  the  National 
Assembly,  though  not  sitting  in  this  second 
Parliament,  was  perhaps  the  most  prominent 
figure  in  that  group,  for  he  was  the  public 
orator  of  Paris ;  and  indeed  the  Mountain  was 
Paris  ;  Paris,  whether  inside  or  outside  the 
Parliament;  Paris  acting  as  the  responsible 
brain  of  France.  Later,  it  was  the  Mountain 
(that  had  first  opposed  the  war)  which  was 
to  ensure  the  success  of  the  French  arms 
by  a  rigidity  and  despotism  in  action  such 
as  the  purer  and  less  practical  minds  of  the 
Girondins  abhorred. 

On  the  3rd  of  December,  1791  (to  quote 
a  fundamental  date  in  the  rapid  progress 
towards  the  war  which  was  to  transform  the 
Revolution),  the  King — writing  in  a  manner 
which  betrays  dictation  by  his  wife — begged 
the  King  of  Prussia  (as  she  had  begged  the 
Emperor)  to  mobilise  an  armed  force,  and 
with  it  to  back  a  Congress  that  should  have 
for  its  object  the  prevention  of  the  spread 
of  the  Revolution.  That  letter  was  typical 
of  the  moment.  From  both  sides  tension 
was  rapidly  proceeding  to  the  breaking  point. 
Nor  was  the  tension  merely  upon  generali- 
ties. The  Revolution  had  broken  a  European 
treaty  in  the  annexation  of  the  Papal  State 
of  Avignon,  and  it  had  broken  European 
conventions  when  it  had  abolished  in  Alsace 
feudal  rights  that  were  possessed  by  the 
princes  of  the  empire.  It  was  as  though 
some  State  to-day,  attempting  Collectivism, 
should  confiscate,  along  with  other  property, 


112     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

securities  lying  in  its  banks,  but  held  by  the 
nationals  of  a  foreign  State. 

On  the  revolutionary  side  also  there  was  a 
definite  point  at  issue,  which  was  the  permis- 
sion accorded  within  the  empire  for  the 
emigrants  to  meet  in  arms  and  to  threaten 
the  French  frontier. 

But  these  precise  and  legal  points  were  not 
the  true  causes  of  the  war.  The  true  causes 
of  the  war  were  the  desire  of  the  unre- 
formed  European  Governments  (notably  those 
of  Prussia  and  Austria)  that  the  Revolution 
should,  in  their  ovv^n  interests,  be  checked,  and 
the  conviction  that  their  armed  forces  were 
easily  capable  of  effecting  the  destruction  of 
the  new  French  regime. 

The  Court  of  Vienna  refused  to  accept  a 
just  indemnity  that  was  offered  the  princes 
of  the  empire  in  Alsace  for  the  loss  of  their 
old  feudal  rights;  Leopold,  the  emperor,  who 
was  one  of  the  same  generation  as  the  French 
King  and  Queen,  died  upon  the  1st  of  March, 
1792,  and  was  succeeded  by  a  son  only  twenty- 
four  years  of  age  and  easily  persuaded  to  war. 

On  the  French  side,  with  the  exception  of 
the  Mountain  and  notably  of  Robespierre, 
there  was  a  curious  coalition  of  opinion 
demanding   war. 

The  Court  and  the  reactionaries  were 
sufficiently  certain  of  the  victory  of  the  Allies 
to  find  their  salvation  in  war. 

The  revolutionary  party,  that  is,  the  mass 
of  public  opinion  and  the  "  patriots,"  as  they 
called  themselves,  the  Girondins,  also,  and 
especially,  desired  war  as  a  sort  of  crusade  for 


THE   PHASES  113 

the  Revolution;  they  suffered  grievous  illu- 
sions, as  enthusiasts  always  must,  and  believed 
the  French  armed  forces  capable  of  sustaining 
the  shock.  The  plans  had  already  been  drawn 
up  for  the  campaign  (and  promptly  betrayed 
to  the  enemy  by  the  Queen);  Dumouriez,  an 
excellent  soldier,  had  from  the  middle  of 
March  1792  been  the  chief  person  in  the 
ministry,  and  the  director  of  foreign  affairs, 
and  a  month  later,  on  the  20th  of  April,  war 
was  declared  against  Austria,  or,  to  be  accu- 
rate, against  "  the  King  of  Hungary  and 
Bohemia." 

Such  was  still  the  official  title  of  Marie 
Antoinette's  nephew,  who,  though  now  suc- 
ceeded to  the  empire,  had  not  yet  been 
crowned  emperor.  It  was  hoped  to  confine 
the  war  to  this  monarch,  and,  indeed,  the 
German  princes  of  the  empire  did  not  join 
him  (the  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Cassel  was  an 
exception).  But  the  one  German  power  that 
counted  most,  the  kingdom  of  Prussia,  which 
Dumouriez  had  especially  hoped  to  keep 
neutral,  joined  forces  with  Austria.  The 
royal  letters  had    done  their  work. 

At  this  critical  moment  the  French  armed 
forces  and  the  French  strongholds  were  at 
their  worst.  The  discipline  of  the  army  was 
A.  deplorable.  The  regular  soldiers  of  the  old 
^  regime  had  lost  from  six  to  nine  thousand 
officers  by  emigration,  and  mixed  no  better 
than  water  and  oil  with  the  revolutionary 
volunteers  who  had  been  drafted  (to  the 
number  of  over  two  hundred  battalions)  into 
the   ranks  of    the   army  ;    moreover,    these 


114     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

volunteer  battalions  were  for  the  most  part  ill 
provided,  far  below  their  establishment,  some 
only  existed  on  paper;  none  were  trained  as 
soldiers  should  be  trained.  In  a  more  orderly 
time,  when  the  decrees  of  the  Government 
corresponded  with  reality,  four  hundred 
thousand  men  would  have  held  the  frontier  ; 
such  a  number  was  in  the  estimates.  As  it 
was,  from  the  Swiss  mountains  to  the  English 
Channel,  the  French  could  count  on  no  more 
than  one- fifth  of  that  number.  Eighty  thousand 
alone  were  under  arms.  The  full  Prussian 
army  was,  alone,  apart  from  its  allies,  close 
upon  treble  the  size  of  this  disorganised  and 
insufficient  force. 

Panics  at  once  ludicrous  and  tragic  opened 
the  campaign  upon  the  French  side.  The 
King  took  advantage  of  them  to  dismiss  his 
Girondin  Ministry  and  to  form  a  reactionary 
Government.  The  Parliament  replied  by 
measures  useless  to  the  conduct  of  war,  and 
designed  only  to  exasperate  the  Crown,  which 
was  betraying  the  nation.  It  ordered  the 
dismissal  of  the  royal  Guard,  the  formation 
of  a  camp  of  revolutionary  Federals  outside 
Paris,  the  transportation  of  the  orthodox 
priests;  in  pursuit  of  the  Court's  determina- 
tion to  resist  the  Assembly  and  to  await  the 
victorious  allies,  Louis  vetoed  the  last  two 
decrees.  La  Fayette,  who  was  now  in  com- 
mand of  the  army  of  the  centre,  with  his  head- 
quarters at  Sedan,  right  upon  the  route  of  the 
invasion,  declared  for  the  King. 

Had  the  armies  of  Austria  and  Prussia 
moved  with  rapidity  at  this  moment,  the 
Revolution  was  at  an  end.     As  it  was,  their 


THE   PHASES  115 

mobilisation  was  slow,  and  their  march, 
though  accurate,  leisurely.  It  gave  time  for 
the  populace  of  Paris  to  demonstrate  against 
the  palace  and  the  royal  family  on  the  20th 
of  June.  It  was  not  until  the  first  days  of 
August  that  the  main  force  of  the  combined 
monarchs,  under  the  generalship-in-chief  of 
the  Duke  of  Brunswick  (who  had  the  reputa- 
tion of  being  the  best  general  of  his  time),  set 
out  for  the  march  on  Paris.  It  was  not  until 
the  23rd  of  August  that  the  invaders  took  the 
first  French  frontier  town,  Longwy. 

Meanwhile  two  very  important  things  had 
lent  to  the  French,  in  spite  of  the  wretched 
insufficiency  of  their  armed  force,  an  intensity 
of  feeling  which  did  something  to  supply  that 
insufficiency.  In  the  first  place,  the  third 
anniversary  of  the  Fall  of  the  Bastille,  the  14th 
of  July,  had  called  to  Paris  deputations  from 
all  the  provinces,  many  of  them  armed;  this 
gave  the  national  feeling  unity.  In  the  second 
place,  Brunswick  had  issued  from  Coblentz, 
which  was  his  base,  upon  the  25th  of  that  same 
month  of  July,  a  manifesto  which  was  known 
in  Paris  three  days  later,  and  which  (though 
certain  modern  historians  have  questioned 
this)  undoubtedly  set  revolutionary  opinion 
ablaze. 

I  This  manifesto  demanded,  in  the  name  of  the 
Allied  Army,  a  complete  restoration  of  the 
old  regime,  professed  to  treat  the  French  and 
their  new  authorities  as  rebels  subject  to 
military  execution,  and  contained  a  clause 
of  peculiar  gravity,  which  excited  an  imme- 
diate and  exasperated  response  from  Paris. 
The  authorship  of  this  clause  lay  with  Marie 


116     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Antoinette,  and  it  threatened,  if  there  were 
any  attack  upon  the  palace,  to  give  the  capital 
over  to  military  execution  and  total  sub- 
version. 

Two  days  later  the  Federals  from  Marseilles, 
a  middle-class  body  of  excellent  citizens, 
though  merely  amateurs  at  soldiering  and 
small  in  numbers,  marched  into  the  city. 
Their  marching  song  has  become  famous  under 
the  title  of  the  *' Marseillaise."  They  had 
accomplished  the  astonishing  feat  of  traversing 
France,  drawing  cannon  with  them,  at  the 
rate  of  eighteen  miles  a  day,  in  the  height  of 
a  torrid  summer,  for  close  upon  a  month  on 
end.  There  is  no  parallel  to  such  an  effort 
in  the  history  of  war,  nor  did  contemporary 
opinion  exaggerate  when  it  saw  in  the  battalion 
of  Marseilles  the  centre  of  the  coming  fight. 

The  shock  between  the  palace  and  the  popu- 
lace was  joined  in  the  morning  of  the  10th  of 
August.  The  palace  was  held  by  about  six 
thousand  men,^  of  whom  some  twelve  hundred 
were  regulars  of  the  Swiss  Guard.  The  palace 
(the  Tuileries)  was,  or  should  have  been, 
impregnable.  The  popular  attack,  we  may  be 
certain,  would  have  been  beaten  back  had  the 
connection  between  the  Tuileries  and  the 
Louvre  on  the  south  been  properly  cut.  The 
flooring  had  indeed  been  removed  at  this 
point  for  some  distance,  but  either  the  gap 
was  not  wide  enough  or  the  post  was  insuffi- 
ciently   guarded  ;     the    populace    and    the 

^  The  reader  should  be  warned  that  these  numbers  are 
hotly  disputed.  The  latest  authority  will  allow  no  more 
than  4000.  After  a  full  consultation  of  the  evidence  I 
can  reduce  the  garrison  to  no  less  than  6000. 


THE   PHASES  117 

Federals,  badly  beaten  in  their  main  attack 
upon  the  long  front  of  the  palace,  suc- 
ceeded in  turning  its  flank  where  it  joined 
on  to  the  Louvre;  they  thus  enfiladed  the 
suites  of  rooms  and  utterly  put  an  end  to  the 
resistance  of  its  garrison. 

Meanwhile  the  King  and  Queen,  the  Dauphin 
and  his  little  sister,  with  others  of  the  royal 
household,  had  taken  refuge  during  the 
fighting  in  the  hall  of  the  Parliament. 

After  the  victory  of  the  populace  their  fate 
was  debated  and  decided  upon;  they  were 
imprisoned  in  the  Tower  of  the  Temple,  a 
mediaeval  fortress  still  standing  in  the  north- 
east of  Paris,  and  though  monarchy  was  not 
yet  formally  abolished,  the  most  extreme 
spirits  which  the  Revolution  then  contained, 
and  the  most  vigorous,  stepped  into  the  place 
of  the  old  Executive,  with  D  ant  on  at  their 
head.  With  them  appeared  in  the  seat  of 
Government  the  spirit  of  military  action,  its 
contempt  for  forms  and  its  rapid  decision. 
The  known  accomplices  of  the  supporters  of 
the  Court's  resistance  and  alliance  with  the 
invaders  were  arrested  by  the  hundred.  The 
enrolment  of  volunteers,  already  enthusiastic 
throughout  France,  was  supported  with  the 
new  vigour  of  oflicial  aid;  and  the  Revolution 
left  at  once  all  its  old  moorings  to  enter  an 
extreme  phase.  At  the  same  moment  the 
frontier  was  crossed  and  the  national  soil 
invaded  on  the  19th  of  August. 

It  is  possible  that  the  delay  of  the  Prussians 
until  that  moment  had  been  calculated,  for 
the  position  in  France  was  complicated  and 
their  decision  to  fight  had  been  tardily  arrived 


118     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

at.  It  was  the  news  of  the  fall  of  the  palace 
that  seems  to  have  decided  them.  The  place, 
like  the  date,  of  this  grave  event,  deserves 
to  be  more  famous  than  it  is.  Brunswick 
touched  what  was  then  French  soil,  in  that 
little  triangle  where  now  German  and  French 
Lorraine  and  Luxembourg  meet.  The  village 
is  called  Redange  :  thence  did  the  privileged 
of  Europe  set  out  to  reach  Paris  and  to  destroy 
democracy.  The  first  task  occupied  them 
for  full  twenty -two  years,  upon  the  latter  they 
are  still  engaged. 

What  forces  the  French  could  there  bring 
against  Brunswick  were  contemptuously 
brushed  aside.  Four  days  later  he  had,  as  we 
have  seen,  taken  the  frontier  stronghold  of 
Longwy;  within  a  week  he  was  in  front  of 
Verdun. 

Verdun  had  no  chance  of  resistance,  no 
garrison  to  call  a  garrison,  and  no  opportunity 
for  defence.  The  news  that  it  must  fall 
reached  Paris  on  the  morning  of  a  fatal  date, 
the  2nd  of  September;  after  its  fall  there 
would  lie  nothing  between  it  and  the  capital ; 
and  from  that  moment  the  whole  nature  of 
the  Revolution  is  wholly  transformed  by  the 
psychological  effect  of  war. 


From  the  invasion  of  September  1792  to  the 
establishment  of  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety,  April  1793. 

The  fifth  phase  of  the   French  Revolution 
may  be  said  to  date  from  these  first  days  of 


THE   PHASES  119 

September  1792,  when  the  news  of  the  success- 
ful invasion  was  maddening  Paris,  and  when 
the  revolutionary  Executive,  established  upon 
the  ruins  of  the  old  dead  monarchy  and  in 
its  image,  was  firmly  in  the  saddle,  up  to  the 
establishment  of  the  yet  more  monarchical 
"  Committee  of  Public  Safety,"  seven  months 
later.  And  these  seven  months  may  be 
characterised  as  follows  : — 

They  were  a  period  during  which  it  was 
attempted  to  carry  on  the  revolutionary  war 
against  the  Governments  of  Europe  upon 
democratic  principles.  The  attempt  failed. 
In  the  place  of  discipline  and  comprehension 
and  foresight  the  rising  and  intense  enthusiasm 
of  the  moment  was  depended  upon  for  victory. 
The  pure  ideal  of  the  Girondin  faction,  with 
the  model  republic  which  it  hoped  to  establish, 
proved  wholly  insufficient  for  the  conduct  of  a 
war  ;  and  to  save  the  nation  from  foreign 
conquest  and  the  great  democratic  experiment 
of  the  Revolution  from  disaster,  it  was  neces- 
sary that  the  military  and  disciplined  side  of 
the  French,  with  all  the  tyranny  that  accom- 
panies that  aspect  of  their  national  genius, 
should  undertake  the  completion  of  the 
adventure. 

This  period  opens  with  what  are  called  the 
/  Massacres  of  September.  I  have  said  upon  a 
former  page  that  ''  the  known  accomplices 
and  supporters  of  the  Coiu-t's  alliance  with  the 
invaders  were  arrested  by  the  hundred,"  upon 
the  fall  of  the  palace  and  the  establishment 
of  a  revolutionary  Executive  with  Danton  at 
its  head. 

These  prisoners,  massed  in  the  lails  of  the 


120     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

city,  were  massacred  to  the  number  of  eleven 
hundred  by  a  small  but  organised  band  of 
assassins  during  the  days  when  the  news  of  the 
fall  of  Verdun  w^as  expected  and  reached  the 
capital.  Such  a  crime  appalled  the  public  con- 
science of  Europe  and  of  the  French  people.  It 
must  never  be  confused  with  the  judicial  and 
military  acts  of  the  Terror,  nor  with  the  repri- 
sals undertaken  against  rebellion,  nor  with  the 
gross  excesses  of  mob  violence;  for  though 
votes  in  favour  of  the  immediate  execution  of 
those  who  had  sided  with  the  enemies  of  the 
country  were  passed  in  certain  primary 
assemblies,  the  act  itself  was  the  mechanical, 
deliberate  and  voluntary  choice  of  a  few 
determined  men.  It  had,  therefore,  a  charac- 
ter of  its  own,  and  that  character  made  it 
stand  out  for  its  contemporaries  as  it  should 
stand  out  for  us  :   it  was  murder. 

The  prisoners  were  unarmed — ^nay,  though 
treasonable,  they  had  not  actually  taken 
arms  ;  their  destruction  was  inspired,  in  most 
of  those  who  ordered  it,  by  mere  hatred. 
Those  who  ordered  it  were  a  small  committee 
acting  spontaneously,  and  Marat  was  their 
chief.^ 

^  The  legend  that  Danton  was  connected  with  the 
massacres  is  based  on  insufficient  historical  foundation. 
Tliere  are  several  second  or  third  hand  stories  in  support 
of  it^  but  the  chief  positive  evidence  brought  forward  in 
this  connection  is  the  stamped  paper  of  the  Minister 
of  Justice  whichj  it  has  been  amply  proved  by  Dr.  Robinet, 
was  taken  by  a  subordinate  and  without  Danton's  know- 
ledge or  complicity.  To  the  much  stupider  story  that  the 
Federals  of  Marseilles  took  part  in  the  massacres,  the 
modern  student  need  pay  no  attention ;  it  has  been 
destroyed  piecemeal  and  on  indefeasible  documentary 
evidence  in  the  monograph  of  Pollio  and  Marcel. 


THE   PHASES  121 

It  was  under  the  impression  of  these 
massacres  that  the  Deputies  of  the  new  or 
third  Assembly  of  the  Revolution,  known  to 
history  as  The  Convention,  met  in  Paris. 

This  Parliament  was  to  be  at  first  the  actual, 
later  the  nominal  governing  power  in  France 
during  the  three  critical  years  that  followed; 
years  which  were  the  military  salvation  of 
the  Revolution,  and  which  therefore  permitted 
the  establishment  of  the  democratic  experi- 
ment in  modern  Europe. 

It  was  on  the  20th  of  September  that  the 
Convention  met  for  its  first  sitting,  which  was 
held  in  the  palace  of  the  Tuileries.  During 
the  hours  of  that  day,  while  it  was  electing 
its  officials,  choosing  its  Speaker  and  the  rest, 
the  French  Army  upon  the  frontier,  to  its  own 
astonishment  and  to  that  of  its  enemy, 
managed  to  hold  in  check  at  the  cannonade  of 
Vahny  the  allied  invaders. 

Upon  the  morrow  the  new  Assembly  met  in 
the  riding  school  (the  Manege),  where  the  two 
former  Assemblies  had  also  sat.  It  was  about 
to  separate  after  that  day's  sitting  when  one 
of  the  members  proposed  the  abolition  of 
Royalty;  the  Convention  voted  the  reform 
unanimously  and  dispersed. 

On  the  third  day,  the  22nd  of  September, 
/it  was  decreed  that  the  public  documents 
should  henceforward  bear  the  date  ''  First 
Year  of  the  Republic";  but  there  was  no 
solemnity  on  the  occasion  ;  the  idea  of  "  No 
King  "  was  novel  and  untried  ;  there  was  as 
yet  no  enthusiasm  for  any  save  the  monarchic 
form  of  government.  It  was  not  until  the 
title  '^  Republic  "  began  to  connote  in  men's 


122     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

minds  political  liberty,  and  had  become  also 
the  flag,  as  it  were,  for  the  victorious  national 
defence,  that  the  Republican  name  acquired 
in  our  Europe,  and  from  France,  that  strong 
and  almost  religious  force  which  it  has  since 
retained. 

The  check  given  to  the  invaders  at  Valmy 
(again  to  the  astonishment  of  both  soldiers 
and  statesmen  !)  determined  the  campaign. 
Sickness  and  the  difficulty  of  communications 
made  the  further  advance  of  the  invaders  im- 
possible. They  negotiated  for  and  obtained 
an  unmolested  retreat,  and  a  few  weeks  later 
they  had  re-crossed  the  frontier. 

Meanwhile,  in  Paris  the  great  quarrel  had 
begun  between  the  Municipal  and  the  National 
Government,  which,  because  Paris  was  more 
decided,  more  revolutionary,  and,  above  all, 
more  military  in  temper  than  the  Parliament, 
was  destined  to  terminate  in  the  victory  of 
the  capital.  The  Girondins  still  stood  in  the 
Assembly  for  an  ideal  republic;  a  republic 
enjoying  to  the  utmost  limit  individual  liberty 
in  its  citizens  and  the  autonomy  of  local 
government  in  every  city  and  parish  ;  but 
opposed  to  this  ideal,  and  far  more  national, 
was  that  of  the  revolutionary  extremists, 
called  in  the  Convention  "  the  Mountain," 
who  had  the  support  of  the  Municipal  Govern- 
ment of  Paris  (known  as  "  the  Commune  "), 
and  were  capable  of  French  victories  in  the 
field.  These  stood  for  the  old  French  and 
soldierly  conception  of  a  strong  central  Govern- 
ment, wherewith  to  carry  on  the  life-and- 
death  struggle  into  which  the  Revolution  had 
now  entered  :   therefore  they  conquered. 


THE  PHASES  123 

All  that  autumn  the  quarrel  between 
France  and  Europe  remained  doubtful,  for 
though  the  armies  of  the  Republic  under 
Dumouriez  won  the  battle  of  Jemappes, 
swept  across  the  north-eastern  frontier  and 
occupied  Belgium,  while  to  the  south  another 
French  army  swept  right  up  to  the  Rhine. 
Dumouriez  himself  knew  well  enough  that  a 
campaign  undertaken  merely  upon  enthusiasm, 
and  with  troops  so  mixed  in  character  and  many 
of  them  so  undisciplined,  would  end  fatally. 
But  until  the  advent  of  the  new  year  public 
opinion  was  not  instructed  upon  these  lines, 
and  the  revolutionary  war  seemed  to  have 
passed  suddenly  from  the  defence  of  the 
national  territory  to  a  crusade  against  the 
kings  and  the  aristocratic  Governments  of 
Europe.  Enthusiasm,  and  enthusiasm  alone, 
was  the  force  of  the  moment.  Violent 
decrees  such  as  the  Declaration  of  Fraternity 
(which  decreed  an  alliance  with  all  people 
struggling  to  be  free)  and  the  opening  of  the 
Scheldt  (a  direct  violation  of  treaty  rights 
to  which  England,  among  other  nations,  was  a 
partner)  were  characteristic  of  the  moment; 
chief  act  of  all,  the  King  was  put  upon  his 
trial  at  the  bar  of  the  Parliament. 

It  was  upon  the  4th  of  January,  1793  (the 
King  had  already  made  his  will  upon  Christmas 
Day),  that  the  chief  orator  of  the  Girondins 
moved  that  the  sentence  should  be  referred 
to  the  people  for  ratification.  The  fear  of 
civil  war  more  than  anything  else  forbade 
this  just  suggestion  to  pass.  Upon  the  15th 
of  January  the  question  was  put  to  the 
Parliament,    "  whether    the   King    had    been 


124     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

guilty  of  conspiring  against  public  liberty  and 
of  attempting  the  general  safety  of  the  State." 
Many  were  absent  and  many  abstained : 
none  replied  in  the  negative;  the  condemna- 
tion of  Louis  was  therefore  technically  almost 
a  unanimous  one. 

The  voting  on  these  grave  issues  was  what 
the  French  call  "  nominal  "  :  that  is,  each 
member  was  called  upon  "  by  name  "  to  give 
his  vote — and  an  expression  of  opinion  as  well 
if  he  so  chose.  A  second  attempt  to  appeal 
to  the  people  was  rejected  by  424  to  283.  On 
the  third  question,  which  was  the  decisive 
one  of  the  penalty,  721  only  could  be  found  to 
vote,  and  of  these  a  bare  majority  of  53 
declared  for  death  as  against  the  minority,  of 
whom  some  voted  for  the  death  penalty 
"  conditionally" — that  is,  not  at  all — or  voted 
against  it.  A  respite  was  lost  by  a  majority  of 
70;  and  on  the  21st  of  January,  1793,  at  about 
ten  in  the  morning,  Louis  XVI  was  guillotined. 

Then  followed  war  with  England,  with 
Holland,  and  with  Spain;  and  almost  at  that 
moment  began  the  inevitable  reflux  of  the 
military  tide.  For  the  French  eruption  up 
to  the  Rhine  in  the  Low  Countries  and  the 
Palatinate,  had  no  permanent  military  basis 
upon  wh^'ch  to  depend.  Dumouriez  began  to 
retreat  a  month  after  the  King's  execution, 
and  on  the  18th  of  March  suffered  a  decisive 
defeat  at  Neerwinden.  It  was  this  retreat, 
followed  by  that  disaster,  which  decided  the 
fate  of  the  Girondin  attempt  to  found  a 
republic  ideally,  individually,  and  locally 
free.     Already,  before  the  battle  of  Neerwin- 


THE   PHASES  125 

den  was  fought,  Danton,  no  longer  a  minister, 
but  still  the  most  powerful  orator  in  the  Con- 
vention, proposed  a  special  court  for  trying 
cases  of  treason — a  court  which  was  later 
called  "  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal."  The 
news  of  Neerwinden  prepared  the  way  for 
a  stronger  measure  and  some  exceptional 
form  of  government ;  a  special  Parliament- 
ary committee  already  formed  for  the 
control  of  ministers  was  strengthened  when, 
on  the  5th  of  April,  after  some  negotia- 
tion and  doubt,  Dumouriez,  despairing  of 
the  armies  of  the  Republic,  thought  to 
ally  his  forces  with  the  invaders  and  to 
restore  order.  His  soldiers  refused  to 
follow  him  ;  his  treason  was  apparent; 
upon  the  morrow  the  Convention  nominated 
that  first  ''  Committee  of  Public  Safety " 
which,  with  its  successor  of  the  same  name, 
was  henceforward  the  true  despotic  and 
military  centre  of  revolutionary  government. 
It  was  granted  secrecy  in  deliberation,  the 
virtual  though  not  the  theoretic  control  of 
the  Ministry,  sums  of  money  for  secret  expen- 
diture, and,  in  a  word,  all  the  machinery 
necessary  to  a  military  executive.  Rousseau's 
Dictator  had  appeared,  the  great  mind  which 
had  given  the  Contrat  Social  to  be  the  gospel 
of  the  Revolution  had  also  foreseen  one  of  the 
necessary  organs  of  democracy  in  its  hardest 
trial;  his  theory  had  been  proved  necessary 
and  true  in  fact.  Nine  members  formed  this 
first  Committee  :  Barere,  who  may  be  called 
the  clerk  of  it,  Danton  its  genius,  and  Cambou 
its  financier,  were  the  leading  names. 


126     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

With  the  establishment  of  this  truly  national 
and  traditional  thing,  whose  form  alone  was 
novel,  but  whose  power  and  method  were 
native  to  all  the  military  tradition  of  Gaul,  the 
Revolution  was  saved.  We  have  now  chiefly 
to  follow  the  way  in  which  the  Committee 
governed  and  in  which  it  directed  affairs  in 
the  great  crisis  of  the  war.  This  sixth  phase 
lasts  for  nearly  sixteen  months,  from  the 
beginning  of  April  1793  to  the  28th  of  July 
1794,  and  it  is  convenient  to  divide  those 
sixteen  months  into  two  divisions. 

VI 

From  April  1793  to  July  1794.. 

The  first  division  of  this  period,  which  ends 
in  the  height  of  the  summer  of  1793,  is  the 
gradual  consolidation  of  the  Committee  as  a 
new  organ  of  government  and  the  peril  of 
destruction  which  it  runs,  in  common  with  the 
nation  it  governs  at  the  hands  of  allied 
Europe. 

The  second  period  includes  part  of  August 
and  all  the  rest  of  1793,  and  the  first  seven 
months  of  1794,  during  which  time  the 
Committee  is  successful  in  its  military  effort, 
the  nation  is  saved,  and  in  a  manner  curiously 
dramatic  and  curiously  inconsequential,  the 
martial  regime  of  the  Terror  abruptly  ceases. 

The  first  step  in  the  consolidation  of  the 
power  of  the  Committee  was  their  letting  loose 
of  the  Commune  of  Paris  and  the  populace  it 
governed  against  the  Girondins. 

Looked  at  merely  from  the  point  of  view  of 


THE   PHASES  127 

internal  politics  (upon  which  most  historians 
have  concentrated)  the  attack  of  the  populace 
of  Paris  and  their  Commune  against  the 
Parliament  seems  to  be  no  more  than  the  end 
of  the  long  quarrel  between  the  Girondins  with 
their  ideal  federal  republic,  and  the  capital 
with  its  instinct  for  strong  centralised  govern- 
ment. But  in  the  light  of  the  military 
situation,  of  which  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  were  vividly  aware,  and  which  it  was 
their  business  to  control,  a  very  different  tale 
may  be  told. 

When  the  defeats  began  the  Parliament  had 
voted  a  levy  of  three  hundred  thousand  men. 
It  was  a  mere  vote  which  came  to  very  little  : 
not  enough  in  numbers  and  still  less  in  moral, 
for  the  type  of  troops  recruited  under  a  system 
of  money  forfeit  and  purchased  substitutes 
was  wholly  beneath  the  task  of  the  great  war. 

This  law  of  conscription  had  been  passed 
upon  the  24th  of  February.  The  date  for  its 
first  application  was,  in  many  villages,  fixed 
for  the  10th  of  March.  All  that  country 
which  borders  the  estuary  of  the  Loire,  to  the 
north  and  to  the  south,  a  country  whose 
geographical  and  political  peculiarities  need 
not  here  detain  us,  but  which  is  still  curiously 
individual,  began  to  resist.  The  decree  was 
unpopular  everywhere,  of  course,  as  military 
service  is  everywhere  unpopular  with  a  settled 
population.  But  here  it  had  no  ally,  for  the 
Revolution  and  all  its  works  were  grossly 
unpopular  as  well.  The  error  of  the  Civil 
Constitution  of  the  Clergy  was  a  powerful 
factor   in   this   revolt.     The   piety   and   the 


128     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

orthodoxy  of  this  district  were  and  are  excep- 
tional. Some  such  resistance  in  some  such 
quarter  was  perhaps  expected  :  what  was  not 
expected  was  its  mihtary  success. 

Four  days  before  the  defeat  of  Neerwinden 
itself,  and  four  days  after  the  decree  of  con- 
scription in  the  villages,  a  horde  of  peasantry 
had  taken  possession  of  the  town  of  Chollet 
in  the  southern  part  of  this  district,  Vendee. 
Three  days  before  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  was  formed  the  insurgents  had  defeated 
regular  forces  at  Machecoul,  and  had  tortured 
and  put  to  death  their  prisoners.  The  month 
of  April,  when  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety 
was  first  finding  its  seat  in  the  saddle,  saw  the 
complete  success  of  the  rebels.  The  forces 
sent  against  them  were  worthless,  for  all 
military  effort  had  been  concentrated  upon 
the  frontier.  Most  of  them  were  not  even 
what  we  should  call  militia.  A  small  force  of 
regulars  was  to  have  moved  from  Orleans,  but, 
before  they  could  attack,  Thouars,  Parthenay, 
and  Fontenay  fell  into  the  power  of  the  rebels. 
These  posts  afforded  an  advanced  triangle 
right  into  the  regularly  administered  territory 
of  the  Republic  :  the  great  town  of  Nantes 
was  outflanked.  Even  in  such  a  moment  the 
Girondins  still  clung  to  their  ideal:  an  indi- 
vidually free  and  locally  autonomous  republic. 
It  is  little  wonder  that  the  temper  of  Paris 
refused  to  support  them,  or  their  influence  over 
the  Parliament,  and  we  can  easily  understand 
how  the  new  Committee  supported  Paris  in  its 
revolt. 

That  revolt  took  place  on  the  81st  of  May. 


THE   PHASES  129 

The  forces  under  the  command  of  the  capital 
did  not  march,  but  a  deputation  of  the  sections 
of  Paris  demanded  the  arrest  of  the  leading 
Girondins.  The  body  of  the  debating  hall 
was  invaded  by  the  mob.  The  Committee 
of  Public  Safety  pretended  to  compromise 
between  Paris  and  the  Parliament,  but  a 
document,  recently  analysed,  sufficiently 
proves  that  their  sympathy  was  with  the 
Parisian  attack.  They  proposed,  indeed,  to 
put  the  armed  force  of  Paris  at  the  disposition 
of  the  Assembly :  that  is,  in  their  own  hands. 
That  day  nothing  of  moment  was  done, 
but  the  Parliament  had  proved  of  no  strength 
in  the  face  of  the  capital.  On  the  frontier 
the  advance  of  the  invaders  had  begun.  The 
great  barrier  fortress  of  Valenciennes  relied 
for  its  defence  upon  the  neighbouring  camp 
of  Famars.  The  garrison  of  that  camp  had 
been  compelled  to  evacuate  it  by  the  advance 
of  the  Allied  Army  upon  the  23rd  of  May, 
and  though  some  days  were  to  be  spent 
before  the  heavy  artillery  of  the  Austrians 
could  be  emplaced,  Valenciennes  was  hence- 
forward at  the  mercy  of  its  besiegers.  There 
was  news  that  La  Vendue  was  not  the  only 
rebellion.  Lyons  had  risen  three  days  before. 
There  had  been  heavy  fighting.  The  Royal- 
ists and  the  Girondins  had  combined  and 
had  carried  the  town  hall  and  established 
an  insurrectionary  and  unelected  Municipal 
Government,  Such  news,  coming  immedi- 
ately after  the  31st  of  May,  roused  the 
capital  to  action.  This  time  the  Parisian 
forces  actually  marched  against  the  Parlia- 

E 


130     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

ment.  The  demand  for  the  suspension  of 
the  twenty-two  named  Girondin  deputies 
was  made  under  arms.  Much  has  been 
written,  and  by  the  best  historians,  to  make 
of  this  successful  day  a  mere  conquest  by 
the  Commune  of  Paris  over  the  Parliament. 
Though  Barere  and  Danton  both  protested 
in  public,  it  was  in  reality  their  politics  that 
conquered  with  Paris.  To  the  twenty-two 
names  that  the  forces  of  Paris  had  listed, 
seven  were  added.  The  great  Girondins, 
Brissot,  Vergniaud  and  the  rest,  were  not 
indeed  imprisoned,  they  were  considered 
"  under  arrest  in  their  houses."  But  the 
moral  authority  of  the  Convention  as  an 
administrative  machine,  not  as  a  legislative 
one,  was  broken  on  this  day,  the  2nd  of  June, 
1793.  Paris  had  ostensibly  conquered,  but 
the  master  who  was  stronger  than  ever  and 
whom  Paris  had  served,  was  the  Committee 
of  Public  Safety. 

This  first  Committee  of  Public  Safety 
endured  to  the  10th  of  July.  In  the  midst 
of  such  a  war  and  of  such  an  internal  struggle 
the  Convention  had  voted  (upon  the  initia- 
tive of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety)  the 
famous  Constitution  of  '93,  that  prime  docu- 
ment of  democracy  which,  as  though  to  mock 
its  own  ideal,  has  remained  no  more  than  a 
written  thing  from  then  until  now.  Therein 
will  be  found  universal  suffrage,  therein  the 
yearly  Parliament,  therein  the  referendum, 
therein  the  elected  Executive — a  thing  no 
Parliament  would  ever  give  us  to-day.  The 
Constitution    was    passed    but    three    weeks 


THE   PHASES  131 

after  the  successful  insurrection  of  Paris. 
A  fortnight  later  still,  on  the  10th  of  July, 
the  first  of  the  Committees  of  Public  Safety 
was  followed  by  its  successor. 

All  this  while  the  Vendeans  were  advancing. 
Nantes,  indeed,  had  held  out  against  the 
rebels,  but  as  we  shall  see  in  a  moment,  the 
Republican  troops  had  not  yet  made  them- 
selves good.  The  rebellion  of  Lyons  was 
fortifying  itself,  and  a  week  later  was  to 
execute  the  Radical  Chalier.  Marseilles  was 
rising.  On  the  10th  of  July  the  Convention 
summoned  to  its  bar  Westermann,  the  friend 
of  Danton,  who  had  just  suffered  defeat  at  the 
hands  of  the  western  rebels. 

It  is  well  to  note  at  this  point  one  of  those 
small  individual  factors  which  determine 
the  fate  of  States.  Danton,  the  master  of 
all  that  first  movement  towards  centralisa- 
tion, the  man  who  had  made  the  10th  of 
August,  who  had  negotiated  with  the  Prus- 
sians after  Valmy,  who  had  determined  upon 
and  formed  a  central  government  against  the 
Girondin  anarchy — had  broken  down.  His 
health  was  gone.  He  was  a  giant  in  body,  but 
for  the  moment  he  had  tired  himself  out. 

The  renewing  of  his  Committee  was  pro- 
posed :  he  was  thrust  out  from  the  new 
choice.  Barere  remained  to  link  the  old 
Committee  with  the  new.  A  violent  sec- 
tarian Calvinist  pastor,  Jeanbon  Saint-Andr^, 
among  the  bravest  and  most  warped  of  the 
Revolutionaries;  Couthon,  a  friend  of  Robes- 
pierre ;  Saint- Just,  a  still  more  intimate  friend 
(a  young,  handsome,  enormously  courageous 

£  2 


132     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

and  decisive  man),  entered,  with  others  to 
the  number  of  nine,  the  new  Committee. 
Seventeen  days  later,  on  the  27th  of  July, 
Robespierre  replaced  one  of  the  minor  mem- 
bers thus  chosen.  He  had  precisely  a  year 
to  live,  and  it  is  the  moment  for  fixing  before 
the  reader's  mind  the  nature  of  his  career. 

Robespierre  was  at  this  moment  the  chief 
figure  in  the  eyes  of  the  crowd,  and  was  soon 
to  be  the  chief  revolutionary  figure  in  the 
eyes  of  Europe  :  that  is  the  first  point.  The 
second  is  of  equal  importance,  and  is  far  less 
generally  recognised.  He  was  not,  and  was 
never  destined  to  be,  the  chief  force  in  the 
revolutionary  Government. 

As  to  the  first  point,  Robespierre  had 
attained  this  position  from  the  following 
combination  of  circumstances :  fh'st,  alone 
of  the  revolutionary  personalities,  he  had 
been  continually  before  the  public  eye  from 
the  beginning  ;  he  had  been  a  member  of 
the  first  Parliament  of  all  and  had  spoken 
in  that  Parliament  in  the  first  month  of  its 
sessions.  Though  then  obscure  in  Versailles, 
he  was  already  well  known  in  his  province 
and  native  town  of  Arras. 

Secondly,  this  position  of  his  in  the  public 
eye  was  maintained  without  a  break,  and 
his  position  and  reputation  had  increased  by 
accumulation  month  after  month  for  the 
whole  four  years.  No  one  else  was  left  in 
the  political  arena  of  whom  this  could  be 
said.  All  the  old  reactionaries  had  gone, 
all  the  moderate  men  had  gone;  the  figures 
of  1793  were  all  new  figures — except  Robes- 


THE   PHASES  133 

pierre ;  and  he  owed  this  continued  and 
steady  increase  of  fame  to  : — 

Thirdly,  his  conspicuous  and  vivid  sin- 
cerity. He  was  more  wholly  possessed  of 
the  democratic  faith  of  the  Contrat  Social 
than  any  other  man  of  his  time :  he  had 
never  swerved  from  an  article  of  it.  There  is 
no  better  engine  for  enduring  fame  than 
the  expression  of  real  convictions.  IMore- 
over — 

Fourthly,  his  speeches  exactly  echoed  the 
opinions  of  his  audience,  and  echoed  them 
with  a  lucidity  which  his  audience  could 
not  have  commanded.  Whether  he  possessed 
true  eloquence  or  no  is  a  matter  still  debated 
by  those  who  are  scholars  in  French  letters. 
But  it  is  certain  that  he  had  in  his  own  time 
all  the  effects  of  a  great  orator,  though  his 
manner  was  precise  and  cold. 

Fifthly,  he  was  possessed  of  a  consistent 
body  of  doctrine  :  that  is,  he  was  not  only 
convinced  of  the  general  democratic  creed 
which  his  contemporaries  held,  and  he  not 
only  held  it  unswervingly  and  uncorruptedly, 
but  he  could  supplement  it  with  a  system  of 
morals  and  even  something  which  was  the 
adumbration  of  religion. 

Sixthly,  he  had,  as  such  characters  always 
can,  but  not  often  do,  gather  round  them- 
selves, a  group  of  intensely  devoted  personal 
admirers  and  supporters,  chief  of  whom  was 
the  young  and  splendidly  courageous  Saint- 
Just. 

It  was  the  combination  of  all  these  things, 
I    say,    which   made   Robespierre   the    chief 


134     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

personality  in  the  public  eye  when  he  entered 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  on  the  27th 
of  July,  1798. 

Now  let  it  be  noted  that,  unlike  his  follower 
Saint-Just,  and  exceedingly  unlike  Danton, 
Robespierre  possessed  none  of  those  militaiy 
qualities  without  which  it  is  impossible  to 
be  responsible  for  government  over  a  mili- 
tary nation — especially  if  that  nation  be  in 
the  act  of  war :  and  such  a  war !  The 
Conmiittee  of  Public  Safety  was  the  Csesar 
of  revolutionary  France.  Robespierre  as  a 
member  of  that  Caesar  was  hopeless.  His 
popularity  was  an  advantage  to  his  colleagues 
in  the  Committee,  but  his  conception  of 
action  upon  the  frontiers  was  vague,  per- 
sonal, and  futile.  His  ambition  for  leader- 
ship, if  it  existed,  was  subordinate  to  his 
ambition  to  be  the  saviour  of  his  people  and 
of  their  democratic  experiment,  and  he  had 
no  comprehension  of  those  functions  of 
leadership  by  which  it  can  co-ordinate  detail 
and  impose  a  plan  of  action.  Robespierre, 
therefore,  in  every  crisis  of  the  last  year  we 
are  about  to  study,  yielded  to  his  colleagues, 
never  impressed  them  and  never  led  them, 
and  yet  (it  was  the  irony  of  his  fate)  was 
imagined  by  his  fellow  countrymen  and  by 
the  warring  Governments  of  Europe  to  be 
the  master  of  them  all. 

The  first  weeks  after  his  appearance  in 
the  Connnittee  of  Public  Safety  were  the 
critical  weeks  of  the  whole  revolutionary 
movement.  The  despotic  action  of  Paris 
(which  I  have  concluded  to  be  secretly  sup- 


THE   PHASES  135 

ported  by  the  Committee)^  had  provoked  insur- 
rection upon  all  sides  in  the  provinces.  Nor- 
mandy had  protested,  and  on  the  13th  of 
July  a  Norman  girl  stabbed  Marat  to  death, 
Lyons,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  some 
weeks  in  revolt;  Marseilles  had  rebelled  in 
the  first  week  of  June,  Bordeaux  and  the 
whole  department  of  the  Gironde  had  of 
course  risen,  for  their  men  were  at  stake. 
Later  Toulon,  the  great  naval  depot  of 
France,  revolted  :  a  reactionary  municipal 
provincial  Government  was   formed    in   that 

Eort,  the  little  boy  imprisoned  in  the  Temple, 
eir  to  the  kingdom,  was  proclaimed  under 
the  title  of  Louis  XVII,  and  before  the  end 
of  August  the  English  and  Spanish  fleets 
had  been  admitted  into  the  harbour  and  an 
excellent  foreign  garrison  was  defending  the 
town  against  the  national   Government. 

Meanwhile  the  Allies  upon  the  Belgian 
frontier  were  doing  what  they  could,  taking 
fortress  after  fortress,  and  while  Mayence 
was  falling  on  the  Rhine,  Valenciennes  and 
Cond6  were  capitulating  on  the  north-eastern 
border,  and  a  portion  of  the  Allied  Army 
was  marching  to  besiege  Dunquerque.  The 
insurrection  in  Vendee,  which  had  broken 
out  in  the  early  part   of  the  year,   though 

^  On  p.  403  of  my  monograph  on  Dan  ton  (Nisbet  &  Co., 
1899)  the  reader  will  find  an  unpublished  report  of  the 
Committee  of  Public  Safety,  drawn  up  immediately  before 
the  destruction  of  the  Girondins  on  the  31st  of  May  It 
forms,  in  my  view,  conclusive  evidence,  read  in  the  light 
of  their  other  actions,  of  the  Committee's  determination, 
to  side  with  Paris. 


136     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

checked  by  the  resistance  of  Nantes,  was 
still  successful  in  the  field. 

It  was  in  the  month  of  August  that  a 
successful  effort  was  made.  Carnot,  who 
soon  proved  the  military  genius  of  the  Re- 
volution, entered  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety.  On  the  23rd  of  the  month  a  true 
levy,  very  different  from  the  futile  and 
insufficiently  applied  attempt  of  the  spring, 
was  forced  upon  the  nation  by  a  vote  in 
Parliament.  It  was  a  levy  of  men,  vehicles, 
animals  and  provision,  and  soon  furnished 
something  not  far  short  of  half  a  million 
soldiers.  With  September  the  tide  turned, 
the  first  victory  in  this  crisis  of  the  struggle, 
Hoondschoote,  relieved  Dunquerque  in  the 
early  days  of  September.  By  mid-October 
a  second  and  decisive  victory,  that  of  Wat- 
tignies,  relieved  Maubeuge.  Lyons  had  been 
taken,  Normandy  was  pacified  long  before; 
by  the  end  of  the  year  Toulon  was  reoccupied, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  last  cohesive  force 
of  the  Vendeans  destroyed. 

But  meanwhile  the  crisis  had  had  a  double 
effect,  moral  and  material.  The  moral  effect 
had  been  a  sort  of  national  madness  in  which 
the  most  extreme  measures  were  proposed 
and  many  of  them  carried  through  with  what 
one  may  call  a  creative  audacity.  The 
calendar  itself  was  changed,  the  week  itself 
abolished,  the  months  re-named  and  re- 
adjusted. Such  an  act  sufficiently  symbolises 
the  mental  attitude  of  the  Revolutionaries. 
They  were  determined  upon  a  new  earth. 

There  went  with  this   the  last  and  most 


THE  PHASES  137 

violent  attack  upon  what  was  believed  to  be 
the  last  remnants  of  Catholicism  in  the 
country,  a  hideous  persecution  of  the  priest- 
hood, in  which  an  uncounted  number  of 
priests  died  under  the  rigours  of  transporta- 
tion or  of  violence.  The  reprisals  against 
the  rebels  varied  from  severity  of  the  most 
awful  kind  to  cruelty  that  was  clearly  insane, 
and  of  which  the  worst  examples  took  place 
at  Arras  and  at  Nantes. 

In  all  this  turmoil  the  governing  centre 
of  the  country,  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety,  not  only  kept  its  head  but  used  the 
enormous  forces  of  the  storm  for  the  pur- 
poses of  achieving  military  success,  under 
that  system  known  as  ''  the  Terror,"  which 
was  for  them  no  more  than  martial  law,  and 
an  engine  of  their  despotic  control.  Of  the 
two  thousand  and  more  that  passed  before 
the  revolutionary  tribunal  and  were  exe- 
cuted in  Paris,  the  large  majority  were  those 
whom  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  judged 
to  be  obstacles  to  their  military  policy;  and 
most  were  men  or  women  who  had  broken 
some  specific  part  of  the  martial  code  which 
the  Government  had  laid  down.  Some  were 
generals  who  had  failed  or  were  suspected  of 
treason  ;  and  some,  among  the  most  con- 
spicuous, were  politicians  who  had  attempted 
to  check  so  absolute  a  method  of  conducting 
the  war. 

Of  these  the  greatest  was  Danton.  Before 
the  end  of  1793  he  began  to  protest  against 
the  system  of  the  Terror  ;  he  believed,  per- 
haps, that  the  country  was  now  safe  in  the 


T38     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

military  sense  and  needed  such  rigours  no 
more.  But  the  Committee  disagreed,  and 
were  evidence  available  we  should  perceive 
that  Carnot  in  particular  determined  that 
such  opposition  must  cease.  Danton  and 
Ms  colleagues  —  including  Desmoulins,  the 
journalist  of  the  Revolution  and  the  chief 
publicist  who  promoted  the  days  of  July  1789 — 
were  executed  in  the  first  week  of  April  1794. 

Parallel  to  this  action  on  the  part  of  the 
Committee  was  their  sudden  attack  upon 
men  of  the  other  extreme  :  the  men  whose 
violence,  excessive  even  for  that  time, 
threatened  to  provoke  reaction.  Hubert  was 
the  chief  of  these,  the  spokesman  of  the 
Commune  of  Paris;  and  he  also  perished. 

Meanwhile  the  Committee  had  permitted 
other  persecutions  and  other  deaths,  notably 
that  of  the  Queen.  A  sane  policy  would  have 
demanded  that  she  should  be  kept  a  hostage  : 
she  was  sacrificed  to  the  desire  for  vengeance, 
and  her  head  fell  on  the  same  day  on  which 
the  decisive  battle  of  Wattignies  was  won. 
Later  the  King's  sister,  Madame  Elisabeth, 
was  sacrificed  to  the  same  passions,  and  with 
her  must  be  counted  a  certain  proportion 
of  the  victims  whose  destruction  could  be  no 
part  of  the  Committee's  scheme,  and  pro- 
ceeded purely  from  the  motives  of  an  ancient 
hatred,  though  in  the  case  of  many  of  these 
who  were  of  aristocratic  birth  or  of  influence 
through  their  w^ealth,  it  is  not  easy  to  deter- 
mine how  far  the  possibility  of  their  intrigue 
with  the  foreigner  may  not  have  led  them  to 
the  scaffold. 


THE   PHASES  189 

In  the  last  four  months  of  the  period  we 
are  considering  in  this  book,  through  April, 
that  is,  after  the  execution  of  Danton,  through 
May  and  June  and  almost  to  the  end  of  July, 
Robespierre  appears  with  a  particular  pro- 
minence. Fads  or  doctrines  of  his  o^ti  are 
admitted  upon  the  Statute  Book  of  the 
Revolution,  notably  his  rehgious  dogmas  of 
a  personal  God  and  of  the  immortality 
of  the  soul.  Nay,  a  public  solemnity  is 
arranged  in  honour  of  such  matters,  and  he 
is  the  high  priest  therein.  The  intensity  of 
the  idolatry  he  received  was  never  greater; 
the  numbers  that  shared  it  were,  perhaps, 
diminishing.  It  is  certain  that  he  did  not 
appreciate  how  far  the  supports  of  his 
great  popularity  were  failing.  It  is  certain 
that  he  saw  only  the  increasing  enthusiasm 
of  his  immediate  followers.  The  Committee 
still  used  him  as  their  tool — notably  for 
an  increase  of  the  Terror  in  June,  but  it 
is  possible  that  for  the  first  time  in  all 
these  months  he  began  to  attempt  some  sort 
of  authority  within  the  Committee  :  we  know, 
for  instance,  that  he  quarrelled  with  Carnot, 
who  was  easily  the  strongest  man  therein. 

In  the  past  they  had  permitted  him  to 
indulge  a  private  policy  where  it  did  not 
interfere  with  the  general  military  plan. 
He  was  largely  responsible,  not  through  his 
own  judgment  but  from  his  desire  to  voice 
opinion,  for  the  trial  and  execution  of  the 
Queen.  He  had  temporised  when  Danton  was 
beginning  his  campaign  against  the  Terror 
at  the  end  of  1793,  and  it  is  an  ineffaceable 


140     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

blot  upon  his  memory  and  his  justly  earned 
reputation  for  integrity  and  sincerity,  that 
he  first  permitted  and  then  helped  towards 
Danton's  execution.  We  may  presume  from 
the  few  indications  we  have  that  he  protested 
against  it  in  the  secret  counsels  of  the  Com- 
mittee, but  he  had  yielded,  and  what  is  more, 
since  Saint -Just  desired  to  be  Danton's  accuser 
he  had  furnished  Saint -Just  with  notes  against 
Danton.  Though  it  was  the  Committee  who 
were  morally  responsible  for  the  extreme 
extension  of  the  Terror  which  proceeded 
during  those  last  few  months,  Robespierre 
had  the  unwisdom  to  act  as  their  instrument, 
to  draft  their  last  decrees,  and,  believing  the 
Terror  to  be  popular,  to  support  it  in  public. 
It  was  this  that  ruined  him.  The  extreme 
Terrorists,  those  who  were  not  yet  satiated 
with  vengeance,  and  who  hated  and  feared  a 
popular  idol,  determined  to  overthrow  him. 

The  mass  of  those  who  might  be  the  next 
victims  and  who,  knowing  nothing  of  the 
secret  councils  of  the  Committee,  imagined 
Robespierre  to  be  what  he  posed  as  being, 
the  master  of  the  Committee,  were  eager  for 
his  removal.  In  his  fictitious  character  as 
the  supposed  chief  power  in  the  State,  all 
the  growing  nausea  against  the  Terror  was 
directed  against  his  person. 

Coincidently  with  such  forces,  the  Commit- 
tee, whom,  relying  upon  his  public  position, 
he  had  begun  to  interfere  with,  and  probably 
to  check  in  their  military  action  (he  certainly 
had  attempted  unsuccessfully  to  save  certain 
lives  against  the  decision  of  his  colleagues), 


THE   PHASES  141 

determined  to  be  rid  of  him.  The  crisis 
came  in  the  fourth  week  of  July  :  or  as  the 
revolutionary  calendar  then  went,  in  the 
second  week  of  Thermidor.  He  was  howled 
down  in  the  Parliament,  an  active  and  clever 
conspiracy  had  organised  all  the  latent  forces 
of  opposition  to  him;  he  still  so  trusted  in 
his  popularity  that  the  scene  bewildered  him, 
and  he  was  still  so  beloved  and  so  ardently 
followed,  that  when  at  that  same  sitting  he 
was  outlawed,  his  brother  sacrificed  himself 
to  follow  him.  Saint-Just  was  included  in  the 
sentence,  and  his  strict  friend  Lebas  volun- 
tarily accepted  the  same  doom. 

What  followed  was  at  first  a  confusion  of 
authority;  put  under  arrest,  the  governor 
of  the  prison  to  which  Robespierre  was 
dispatched  refused  to  receive  him.  He  and 
his  sympathisers  met  in  the  Hotel  de  Ville 
after  the  fall  of  darkness,  and  an  attempt  was 
made  to  provoke  an  insurrection.  There 
are  many  and  confused  accounts  of  what 
immediately  followed  at  midnight,  but  two 
things  are  certain  :  the  populace  refused  to 
rise  for  Robespierre,  and  the  Parliament, 
with  the  Committee  at  its  back,  organised 
an  armed  force  which  easily  had  the  better 
of  the  incipient  rebellion  at  the  Hotel  de 
Ville.  It  is  probable  that  Robespierre's 
signature  was  needed  to  the  proclamation  of 
insurrection  :  it  is  certain  that  he  did  not 
complete  it,  and  presumable  that  he  would 
not  act  against  all  his  own  theories  of  popular 
sovereignty  and  the  general  will.  As  he  sat 
there   with   the   paper   before   him   and   his 


142     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

signature  still  unfinished,  the  armed  force 
of  the  Parliament  burst  into  the  room,  a 
lad  of  the  name  of  Merda  aimed  a  pistol  from 
the  door  at  Robespierre,  and  shot  him  in  the 
jaw,  (The  evidence  in  favour  of  this  version 
is  conclusive.)  Of  his  companions,  some  fled 
and  were  captured,  some  killed  themselves, 
most  were  arrested.  The  next  day,  the  10th 
Thermidor,  or  28th  of  July,  1794,  at  half- 
past  seven  in  the  evening,  Robespierre,  with 
twenty-one  others,  was  guillotined. 

The  irony  of  history  would  have  it  that 
the  fall  of  this  man,  which  was  chiefly  due 
to  his  interference  with  the  system  of  the 
Terror,  broke  all  the  moral  force  upon  which 
the  Terror  itself  had  resided;  for  men  had 
imagined  that  the  Terror  was  his  work,  and 
that,  he  gone,  no  excuse  was  left  for  it.  A 
reaction  began  which  makes  of  this  date 
the  true  term  in  that  ascending  series  of 
revolutionary  effort  which  had  by  then  dis- 
cussed every  aspect  of  democracy,  succeeded 
in  the  military  defence  of  that  experiment, 
and  laid  down,  though  so  far  in  words  only, 
the  basis  of  the  modern  State. 


V 

THE    MILITARY    ASPECT  OF   THE   REVOLUTION 

The  Revolution  would  never  have  achieved 
its  object :  on  the  contrary,  it  would  have  led 
to   no  less  than  a  violent  reaction   against 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         143 

those  principles  which  were  maturing  before 
it  broke  out,  and  which  it  carried  to  triumph, 
had  not  the  armies  of  revolutionary  France 
proved  successful  in  the  field  ;  but  the  grasp- 
ing of  this  mere  historic  fact,  I  mean  the 
success  of  the  revolutionary  armies,  is  un- 
fortunately no  simple  matter. 

We  all  know  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
Revolution  was,  upon  the  whole,  successful 
in  imposing  its  view  upon  Europe.  We  all 
know  that  from  that  success  as  from  a  germ 
has  proceeded,  and  is  still  proceeding,  modern 
society.  But  the  nature,  the  cause  and  the 
extent  of  the  military  success  which  alone 
made  this  possible,  is  widely  ignored  and  still 
more  widely  misunderstood.  No  other  signal 
military  effort  which  achieved  its  object  has 
in  history  ended  in  military  disaster — yet 
this  was  the  case  with  the  revolutionary 
wars.  After  twenty  years  of  advance,  during 
which  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  were  sown 
tlu'oughout  Western  civilisation,  and  had 
time  to  take  root,  the  armies  of  the  Revolu- 
tion stumbled  into  the  vast  trap  or  blunder 
of  the  Russian  campaign  ;  this  was  succeeded 
by  the  decisive  defeat  of  the  democratic 
armies  at  Leipsic,  and  the  superb  strategy  of 
the  campaign  of  1814,  the  brilliant  rally  of 
what  is  called  the  Hundred  Days,  only  served 
to  emphasise  the  completeness  of  the  ap- 
parent failure.  For  that  masterly  campaign 
was  followed  by  Napoleon's  first  abdica- 
tion, that  brilliant  rally  ended  in  Waterloo 
and  the  ruin  of  the  French  army.  When  we 
consider  the  spread  of  Grecian  culture  over 


IM     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  East  by  the  parallel  military  triumph  of 
Alexander,  or  the  conquest  of  Gaul  by  the 
Roman  armies  under  Caesar,  we  are  met  by 
political  phenomena  and  a  political  success 
no  more  striking  than  the  success  of  the 
Revolution.  The  Revolution  did  as  much  by 
the  sword  as  ever  did  Alexander  or  Csesar, 
and  as  surely  compelled  one  of  the  great 
transformations  of  Europe.  But  the  fact  that 
the  great  story  can  be  read  to  a  conclusion 
of  defeat  disturbs  the  mind  of  the  student. 

Again,  that  element  fatal  to  all  accurate 
study  of  military  history,  the  imputation 
of  civilian  virtues  and  motives,  enters  the 
mind  of  the  reader  with  fatal  facility  when 
he  studies  the  revolutionary  wars. 

He  is  tempted  to  ascribe  to  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  troops,  nay,  to  the  political  movement 
itself,  a  sort  of  miraculous  power.  He  is  apt  to 
use  with  regard  to  the  revolutionary  victories 
the  word  "  inevitable,"  which,  if  ever  it 
applies  to  the  reasoned,  willing  and  conscious 
action  of  men,  certainly  applies  least  of  all 
to  men  when  they  act  as  soldiers. 

There  are  three  points  which  we  must 
carefully  bear  in  mind  when  we  consider  the 
military  history  of  the  Revolution. 

First,  that  it  succeeded  :  the  Revolution, 
regarded  as  the  political  motive  of  its  armies, 
won. 

Secondly,  that  it  succeeded  through  those 
military  aptitudes  and  conditions  which  hap- 
pened to  accompany,  but  by  no  means  neces- 
sarily accompanied,  the  strong  convictions 
and  the  civic  enthusiasm  of  the  time. 


THE   MILITARY   ASPECT         145 

Thirdly,  that  the  element  of  chance,  which 
every  wise  and  prudent  reasoner  will  very 
largely  admit  into  all  military  affairs,  worked 
in  favom^  of  the  Revolution  in  the  critical 
moments  of  the  early  wars. 

With  these  points  fixed,  and  with  a  readi- 
ness to  return  to  them  when  we  have  appre- 
ciated the  military  story,  it  is  well  to  begin 
our  study  by  telling  that  story  briefly,  and 
upon  its  most  general  lines.  In  so  doing,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  cover  here  and  there 
points  which  have  already  been  dealt  with  in 
this  book,  but  that  is  inevitable  where  one 
is  writing  of  the  military  aspect  of  any  move- 
ment, for  it  is  impossible  to  deal  with  that 
aspect  save  as  a  living  part  of  the  whole  :  so 
knit  into  national  life  is  the  business  of  war. 


ONE 

When  the  Revolution  first  approached 
action,  the  prospect  of  a  war  between  France 
and  any  other  great  Power  of  the  time — 
England,  Prussia,  the  Empire,  or  let  us  say 
Russia,  or  even  Spain — was  such  a  prospect 
as  might  have  been  entertained  at  any  time 
during  the  past  two  or  three  generations  of 
men. 

For  pretty  well  a  hundred  years  men  had 
been  accustomed  to  the  consideration  of 
dynastic  quarrels  supported  by  a  certain 
type  of  army,  which  in  a  moment  I  shall 
describe. 

I  have  called  these  quarrels  dynastic  ;  that 
is,   they  were  mainly  quarrels  between  the 


146     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

ruling  houses  of  Europe  :  were  mainly  motived 
by  the  desire  of  each  ruling  house  to  acquire 
greater  territory  and  revenue,  and  were 
limited  by  the  determination  of  all  the  ruling 
houses  to  maintain  certain  ideas  inviolate, 
as,  for  instance,  the  sacredness  of  monarchy, 
the  independence  of  individual  States,  etc. 
Though  they  were  in  the  main  dynastic,  yet 
in  proportion  as  a  dynasty  might  represent  a 
united  nation,  they  were  national  also.  The 
English  oligarchy  was  in  this  respect  peculiar 
and  more  national  than  any  European  Govern- 
ment of  its  time.  It  is  also  true  to  say  that 
the  Russian  despotism  had  behind  it,  in  most 
of  its  military  adventures  and  in  all  its  spirit 
of  expansion,  the  subconscious  agreement  of 
the  people. 

Still,  however  national,  the  wars  of  the 
time  preceding  the  Revolution  moved  within 
a  fixed  framework  of  ideas,  as  it  were,  which 
no  commander  and  no  diplomatist  dreamed 
of  exceeding.  A,  the  crow^ned  head  of  a 
State,  would  have  some  claims  against  B, 
the  crowned  head  of  another  State,  with 
regard  to  certain  territories.  C,  the  crowned 
head  or  Government  of  a  third  State,  would 
remain  neutral  or  ally  himself  with  either 
of  the  two  ;  if  he  allied  himself,  then,  as  a 
rule,  it  was  with  the  weaker  against  the 
stronger,  in  order  to  guarantee  himself  against 
too  great  an  increase  on  the  part  of  a  rival. 
Or,  again,  a  rebelUon  would  break  out  against 
the  power  of  A  in  some  part  of  his  dominions; 
then  would  B,  somewhat  reluctantly  (as  the 
almost  unlimited  right  of  an  existing  executive 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         147 

was  still  a  strong  dogma  in  men's  minds),  tend 
to  ally  himself  with  the  rebels  in  order  to 
diminish  the  power  of  A. 

Human  affairs  have  always  in  them  very 
strongly  and  permanently  inherent,  the  char- 
acter of  a  sport :  the  interest  (at  any  rate  of 
males)  in  the  conduct  of  human  life  is  always 
largely  an  interest  of  seeing  that  certain 
rules  are  kept,  and  certain  points  won,  accord- 
ing to  those  rules.  We  must,  therefore, 
beware  of  ridiculing  the  warfare  of  the  century 
preceding  the  Revolution  under  the  epithet 
of  "  a  game."  But  it  is  true  of  that  warfare, 
and  honourably  true,  that  it  attempted 
limited  things  in  a  limited  manner  ;  it  did 
not  attempt  any  fundamental  change  in 
society ;  it  was  not  overtly — since  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  at  least — a  struggle  of  ideas  ;  it 
was  conducted  on  behalf  of  known  and 
limited  interests  for  known  and  highly 
limited  objects,  and  the  instruments  with 
which  it  was  conducted  were  instruments 
artificial  and  segregated  from  the  general 
life  of  nations. 

These  instruments  were  what  have  been 
called  the  "  professional  "  armies.  The  term 
is  very  insufficient,  and,  in  part,  misleading. 
The  gentry  of  the  various  Powers,  mixed 
with  whom  were  certain  adventurers  not 
always  of  gentle  blood,  were  the  officers  that 
led  these  forces  ;  and  for  the  major  part  of 
the  gentry  in  most  European  countries,  the 
military  career  was  the  chief  field  of  activity. 
The  men  whom  they  led  were  not  a  peasantry 
nor  a  working   class,  still  less  a  civic  force 


148     THE    FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

in  which  the  middle  class  would  find  itself 
engaged :  they  were  the  poorest  and  the 
least  settled,  some  would  have  said  the  dregs 
of  European  life.  With  the  exception  here 
and  there  of  a  man — usually  a  very  young 
man  whom  the  fabled  romance  of  this  hard 
but  glorious  trade  had  attracted — and  with 
the  exception  of  certain  bodies  that  followed 
in  a  mass  and  by  order  the  relics  of  a  feudal 
lordship,  the  armies  of  the  period  immediately 
preceding  the  Revolution  were  armies  of  very 
poor  men,  who  had  sold  themselves  into  a  sort 
of  servitude  often  exciting  and  even  adven- 
turous, but  not,  when  we  examine  it  minutely, 
a  career  that  a  free  man  would  choose.  The 
men  were  caught  by  economic  necessity,  by 
fraud,  and  in  other  ways,  and  once  caught 
were  held.  No  better  proof  of  this  could 
be  found  than  the  barbarous  severity  of  the 
punishments  attached  to  desertion,  or  to 
minor  forms  of  indiscipline.  So  held,  they 
were  used  for  the  purposes  of  the  game,  not 
only  in  what  would  make  them  serviceable 
instruments  of  war,  but  also  in  what  v/ould 
make  them  pleasing  to  their  masters.  Strict 
alignment,  certain  frills  of  parade  and  ap- 
pearance, all  that  is  required  in  a  theatre  or 
in  a  pretentious  household,  appear  in  the 
military  regulations  of  the  time. 

I  must  not  in  all  this  be  supposed  to  be 
belittling  that  great  period  between  1660  and 
1789,  during  which  the  art  of  war  was  most 
thoroughly  thought  out,  the  traditions  of 
most  of  our  great  European  armies  fixed, 
and  the  permanent  military  qualities  which 


THE   MILITARY  ASPECT        149 

we  still  inherit  developed.  The  men  so 
caught  as  private  soldiers  could  not  but 
enjoy  the  game  when  it  was  actively  played, 
for  men  of  European  stock  will  always  enjoy 
the  game  of  war ;  they  took  glory  in  its 
recital  and  in  its  memories  ;  to  be  a  soldier, 
3ven  under  the  servile  conditions  of  the  time, 
;vas  a  proper  subject  for  pride,  and  it  is 
further  to  be  remarked  that  the  excesses  of 
cruelty  discoverable  in  the  establishment  of 
their  discipline  were  also  accompanied  by  very 
high  and  lasting  examples  of  military  virtue. 
The  behaviour  of  the  English  contingents  at 
Fontenoy  afford  but  one  of  many  examples  of 
what  I  mean. 

Still,  to  understand  the  wars  of  the  Revolu- 
tion we  must  clearly  establish  the  contrast 
between  the  so-called  professional  armies 
which  preceded  that  movement  and  the 
armies  which  the  Revolution  invented,  used, 
and  bequeathed  to  the  modern  world. 

So  also,  to  revert  to  what  was  said  above, 
we  must  recall  the  dynastic  and  limited 
character  of  the  wars  in  which  the  eighteenth 
century  had  been  engaged  ;  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  Revolution  no  other  wars  were  con- 
templated by  men. 

Had  you  spoken,  for  instance,  at  any 
moment  in  1789,  to  a  statesman,  whether  of 
old  experience  or  only  introduced  to  political 
life  by  the  new  movement,  of  the  position  of 
Great  Britain,  he  would  at  once  have  dis- 
cussed that  position  in  the  terms  of  Great 
Britain's  recent  defeat  at  the  hands  of  France 
in  the  affair  of  the  American  colonies.     Had 


150     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

you  discussed  with  him  the  position  of 
Prussia  he  would  at  once  have  argued  it  in 
connection  with  Prussia's  secular  opposition 
to  Austria  and  the  Empire.  Had  you  asked 
him  how  he  considered  Spain,  he  would  have 
spoken  of  the  situation  of  Spain  as  against 
France  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  Spain 
was  a  Bourbon  monarchy  allied  in  blood  to 
the  French  throne.  And  so  forth.  No  true 
statesman  imagined  at  the  time,  nor,  indeed, 
for  many  years,  that  a  war  of  ideaSy  nor  even, 
strictly  speaking,  of  nations,  was  possible. 
Even  when  such  a  war  was  actually  in  pro- 
cess of  waging,  the  diplomacy  which  attempted 
to  establish  a  peace,  the  intrigues  whereby 
alliances  were  sought,  or  neutrality  negotiated, 
were  dependent  upon  the  older  conception 
of  things  ;  and  the  historian  is  afforded,  as 
he  regards  this  gigantic  struggle,  the  ironic 
satisfaction  of  seeing  men  fighting  upon 
doctrines  the  most  universal  conceivable 
and  yet  perpetually  changing  their  conduct 
during  the  struggle  according  to  conceptions 
wholly  particular,  local  and  ephemeral,  and 
soon  to  be  entirely  swept  away  by  time. 

Napoleon  himself  must  needs  marry  an 
Austrian  archduchess  as  part  of  this  old 
prejudice,  and  for  years  brains  as  excellent  as 
Danton's  or  Talleyrand's  conjecture  the  possi- 
bility of  treating  now  England,  now  Prussia, 
as  neutral  to  the  vast  attempt  of  the  French 
to  destroy  privilege  in  European  society  ! 

One  may  say  that  for  two  years  the  con- 
nection of  the  revolutionary  movement  with 
arms  had  no  aspect  save  that  of  civil  war 


THE   MILITARY   ASPECT         151 

True,  whenever  a  considerable  change  is  in 
progress  in  society  the  possibihty  of  foreign 
war  in  connection  with  it  must  always  arise. 
Were  some  European  State,  for  instance, 
to  make  an  experiment  in  Collectivism  to-day, 
the  chance  of  foreign  intervention  would  cer- 
tainly be  discussed  by  the  promoters  of  that 
experiment.  But  no  serious  danger  of  an  armed 
struggle  between  the  French  and  any  of  their 
neighbours  in  connection  with  the  political 
experiment  of  the  Revolution  was  imagined 
by  the  mass  of  educated  men  in  France  itself 
nor  without  the  boundaries  of  France  during 
those  first  two  years.  And,  I  repeat,  the 
military"  aspect  of  those  years  was  confined  to 
civil  tumult.  Nevertheless,  that  aspect  is  not 
to  be  neglected.  The  way  in  which  the  French 
organised  their  civil  war  (and  there  was  always 
something  of  it  present  from  the  summer  of 
1789  onwards)  profoundly  affected  the  foreign 
war  that  was  to  follow  :  for  in  their  internal 
struggles  great  masses  of  Frenchmen  became 
habituated  to  the  physical  presence,  millions 
to  the  discussion,  of  arms. 

It  is,  as  we  have  seen  in  another  part  of 
this  book,  a  repeated  and  conspicuous  error 
to  imagine  that  the  first  revolutionary  out- 
breaks were  not  met  sufficiently  sternly 
by  royal  troops.  On  the  contrary,  the  royal 
troops  were  used  to  the  utmost  and  were 
defeated.  The  populace  of  the  large  towns, 
and  especially  of  Paris,  proved  itself  capable 
of  military  organisation  and  of  military 
action.  When  to  this  capacity  had  been 
added  the   institution   of   the  militia  called 


152     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

the  National  Guard,  there  were  already  the 
makings  of  a  nation  wholly  military. 

Much  in  this  exceptional  and  new  position 
must  be  ascribed  to  the  Gallic  character.  It 
may  be  said  that  from  the  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire  to  the  present  day  that  character  has 
been  permanently  and  of  its  own  volition 
steeped  in  the  experience  of  organised  fighting. 
Civil  tumult  has  been  native  to  it,  the  risk  of 
death  in  defence  of  political  objects  has  been 
equally  familiar,  and  the  whole  trade  of  arms, 
its  necessary  organisation,  its  fatigues  and 
its  limiting  conditions,  have  been  very 
familiar  to  the  population  throughout  all 
these  centuries.  But  beyond  this  the  fact 
that  the  Revolution  prepared  men  in  the 
school  of  civil  tumult  was  of  the  first  advan- 
tage for  its  later  aptitude  against  foreign 
Powers. 

It  is  always  well  in  history  to  fix  a  definite 
starting-point  for  any  political  development, 
and  the  starting-point  of  the  revolutionary 
wars  may  easily  be  fixed  at  the  moment 
when  Louis,  his  queen  and  the  royal  children 
attempted  to  escape  to  the  frontier  and  to 
the  Army  of  the  Centre  under  the  command 
of  Bouille.  This  happened,  as  we  have  seen, 
in  June  1791. 

Many  factors  combine  to  make  that  date 
the  starting-point.  In  the  first  place,  until 
that  moment  no  actual  proof  had  been 
apparent  in  the  eyes  of  European  monarchs 
of  the  captivity  of  their  chief  exemplar,  the 
king  of  France. 

The    wild  march  upon   Versailles,  in   the 


THE   MILITARY  ASPECT         153 

days  of  October  1789,  had  its  parallel  in  a 
hundred  popular  tumults  with  which  Europe 
was  familiar  enough  for  centuries.  But  the 
rapidly  succeeding  reforms  of  the  year  1790, 
and  even  the  great  religious  blunder  of  1791, 
had  received  the  signature  and  the  public 
assent  of  the  Crown.  The  Court,  though  no 
longer  at  Versailles,  was  splendid,  the  power 
of  the  King  over  the  Executive  still  far  greater 
than  that  of  any  other  organ  in  the  State,  and 
indefinitely  greater  than  that  of  any  other 
individual  in  the  State.  The  talk  of  cap- 
tivity, of  insult  and  the  rest,  the  outcries  of 
the  emigrants  and  the  perpetual  complaint 
of  the  French  royal  family  in  its  private 
relations,  seemed  exaggerated,  or  at  any  rate 
nothing  to  act  upon,  until  there  came  the 
shock  of  the  King's  attempted  flight  and  re- 
capture. This  clinched  things  ;  and  it  clinched 
them  all  the  more  because  more  than  one 
Court,  and  especiall}''  that  of  Austria,  believed 
for  some  days  that  the  escape  had  been 
successful. 

Again,  the  flight  and  its  failure  put  the 
army  into  a  ridiculous  posture.  Action 
against  the  Revolution  was  never  likely,  so 
long  as  the  discipline  and  steadiness  of  the 
French  army  were  believed  in  abroad.  But 
the  chief  command  had  hopelessly  failed  upon 
that  occasion,  and  it  was  evident  that  the 
French-speaking  troops  could  not  easily  be 
trusted  by  the  Executive  Government  or  by 
their  own  commanders.  Furthermore,  the 
failure  of  the  flight  leads  the  Queen,  with 
her  vivacity   of    spirit  and  her  rapid  though 


154     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

ill-formed  plans,  to  turn  for  the  first  time  to 
the  idea  of  military  intervention.  Her  letters 
suggesting  this  (in  the  form  of  a  threat  rather 
than  a  war,  it  is  true)  do  not  begin  until  after 
her  capture  at  Varennes. 

Finally,  coincident  with  that  disaster  was 
the  open  mention  of  a  Republic,  the  open 
suggestion  that  the  King  should  be  deposed, 
and  the  first  definite  and  public  challenge 
to  the  principles  of  monarchy  which  the 
Revolution  had  thrown  down  before  Europe. 

We  are,  therefore,  not  surprised  to  find  that 
this  origin  of  the  military  movement  was  fol- 
lowed in  two  months  by  the  Declaration  of 
Pillnitz. 

With  the  political  nature  of  that  Declara- 
tion one  must  deal  elsewhere.  Its  military 
character  must  here  be  observed. 

The  Declaration  of  Pillnitz  corresponded 
as  nearly  as  possible  to  what  in  the  present 
day  would  be  an  order  preparatory  to  mobi- 
lising a  certain  proportion  of  the  reserve.  It 
cannot  with  justice  be  called  equivalent  to  an 
order  calling  out  all  the  reserves,  still  less 
equivalent  to  an  order  mobilising  upon  a  war 
footing  the  forces  of  a  modern  nation,  for  such 
an  action  is  tantamount  to  a  declaration  of 
war  (as,  for  instance,  was  the  action  of  the 
English  Government  before  the  South  Africaii 
struggle),  and  Pillnitz  was  very  far  from  that. 
But  Pillnitz  was  certainly  as  drastic  a  military 
proceeding  as  would  be  the  public  intimation 
by  a  group  of  Powers  that  the  reserves  had 
been  warned  in  connection  with  their  quarrel 
against  another  Power.     It  was,  for  instance, 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         155 

quite  as  di^astic  as  the  action  of  Austria  against 
Servia  in  1908.  And  it  was  intended  to  be 
followed  by  such  submission  as  is  expected  to 
follow  upon  the  threat  of  superior  force. 

Such  was  the  whole  burden  of  Marie 
Antoinette's  letters  to  her  brother  (who  had 
called  the  meeting  at  Pillnitz),  and  such  was 
the  sense  in  which  the  politicians  of  the 
Revolution  understood  it. 

All  that  autimm  and  winter  the  matter 
chiefly  watched  by  foreign  diplomatists  and 
the  clearest  of  French  thinkers  was  the 
condition  of  the  French  forces  and  of  their 
command.  Narbonne's  appointment  to  the 
Ik  War  Oiiice  counted  more  than  any  political 
move,  Dumouriez'  succession  to  him  was 
the  event  of  the  time.  Plans  of  campaign 
were  drawn  up  (and  promptly  betrayed  by 
Marie  Antoinette  to  the  enemy),  manifold 
occasions  for  actual  hostilities  were  discovered, 
the  Revolution  challenged  the  Emperor  in  the 
matter  of  the  Alsatian  princes,  the  Emperor 
challenged,  through  Kaunitz,  the  Revolution 
in  a  letter  directly  interfering  with  the  internal 
^  affairs  of  France,  and  pretending  to  a  right 
*  of  ingdrence  therein;  and  on  the  20th  of 
April,  1792,  war  was  declared  against  the 
Empire.  Prussia  thereupon  informed  the 
French  Government  that  she  made  common 
cause  with  the  Emperor,  and  the  revolutionary 
stiniggle  had  begun. 

Tlie  war  discovered  no  serious  features 
during  its  first  foiu*  months  :  so  slow  was  the 
gathering  and  march  of  the  Allies;  but  the 
panics  into  which  the  revolutionaiy   troops 


156    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

fell  in  the  first  skirmishes,  their  lack  of  dis- 
cipline, and  the  apparent  breakdown  of  the 
French  military  power,  made  the  success  of 
the  Invasion  in  Force,  when  it  should  come, 
seem  certain.  The  invading  army  did  not 
cross  the  frontier  until  more  than  a  week 
after  the  fall  of  the  palace.  Longwy  capitu- 
lated at  once  ;  a  week  later,  in  the  last  days 
of  August,  the  great  frontier  fortress  of  Verdun 
was  summoned.  It  capitulated  almost  im 
mediately. 

TWO 

On  the  2nd  of  September  Verdun  was 
entered  by  the  Prussians,  and  a  little  outside 
the  gates  of  the  town,  near  a  village  bearing 
the  name  of  Regret,  the  allied  camp  was  fixed. 
Rather  more  than  a  week  later,  on  the  11th, 
the  Allies  marched  against  the  line  of  the 
Argonne. 

The  reader  will  remember  that  this  moment, 
with  the  loss  of  the  frontier  fortresses  Longwy 
and  Verdun,  and  the  evidence  of  demoralisa- 
tion which  that  afforded,  was  also  the  moment 
of  the  September  massacres  and  of  the  horrors 
in  Paris.  Dumouriez  and  the  mixed  French 
force  which  he  commanded  had  been  ordered 
by  the  Ministers  of  War  to  hold  the  line  of 
the  Argonne  against  which  the  Allies  were 
marching.  And  here  it  is  well  to  explain 
what  was  meant  in  a  military  sense  by  this 
word  "  line." 

The  Argonne  is  a  long,  nearly  straight 
range  of  hills  running  from  the  south  north- 
ward, a  good  deal  to  the  west  of  north. 


THE   MILITARY   ASPECT        157 

Their  soil  is  clay,  and  though  the  height 
of  the  hills  is  only  three  hundred  feet  above 
the  plain,  their  escarpment  or  steep  side  is 
towards  the  east,  whence  an  invasion  may 
be  expected.  They  are  densely  wooded, 
Erom  five  to  eight  miles  broad,  the  supply  of 
water  in  them  is  bad,  in  many  parts  undrink- 
able  ;  habitation  with  its  provision  for  armies 
and  roads  extremely  rare.  It  is  necessary 
to  insist  upon  all  these  details  because  the 
greater  part  of  civilian  readers  find  it  difficult 
to  understand  how  formidable  an  obstacle 
so  comparatively  unimportant  a  feature  in 
the  landscape  may  be  to  an  army  upon  the 
march.  It  was  quite  impossible  for  the  guns, 
the  wagons,  and  therefore  the  food  and  the 
ammunition  of  the  invading  army,  to  pass 
through  the  forest  over  the  drenched  clay 
land  of  that  wet  autumn  save  where  proper 
roads  existed.  These  were  only  to  be  found 
wherever  a  sort  of  natural  pass  negotiated  the 
range. 

Three  of  these  passes  alone  existed,  and 
to  this  day  there  is  very  little  choice  in  the 
crossing  of  these  hills.  The  accompanying 
sketch  will  explain  their  disposition.  Through 
the  southernmost  went  the  great  high  road 
from  the  frontier  and  Verdun  to  Paris.  At 
the  middle  one  (which  is  called  the  Gap  of 
Grandpre)  Dumouriez  was  waiting  with  his 
incongruous  army.  The  third  and  northern 
one  was  also  held,  but  less  strongly.  The 
obvious  march  for  an  unimpeded  invader 
would  have  been  from  Verdun  along  the  high 
road,  through    the   southern  pass   at    "  Les 


158     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

Islettes,"  and  so  to  Chalons  and  on  to  Paris. 
But  Dumouriez,  marching  down  rapidly  from 
the  north,  had  set  an  advanced  guard  to  hold 


•■    Ab    a^    •«    -^  )f»rch ttfAHib^ 

to  Vaimy. 

« ^  D^imouriez'MenJi. 

*t!tv> ».-. « ■•■%>•  .•.•••■  ■■■'■>MeJlermMni  .. 
I  iff  CroJx  eux  Bots  < 

Pass  through  Argonne 
held  by  French  *  farced    _ 
b)f  iht  Austrians  off  J(|pA/#7 


«..  Cr^ndPri: 

f'^ss  over  Aroonne  held  by 
[lumauriei.  till  he  •.asturued 
tf  .'he  a^prure  ct  i. 

2  Ui  Islettes . 

Psss  overAryonnt.htld 
throughout  t/ythe  French. 


^AUlOS       n         •      ,      .    . 

Z..'f^&'^f/>  Jhs/'horr  abundoir 
o/ifi^fTung  of  the  Argon  na"" 


Scafe  oFCng!.  Mi/ti. 


Sketch  Map,  showing  the  turning  of  the  positions  or.  the 
Argonne  and  the  Cannonade  at  Valmy,  September  1792. 

that  pass  and  was  lying  himself  with  the  mass 
of  the  army  on  the  pass  to  the  north  of  it  at 
Grandpr^.  Against  Grandpre  the  Prussians 
marched,  and  meanwhile  the  Austrians  wxre 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT        159 

attacking  the  further  pass  to  the  north.  Both 
were  forced.  Dumouriez  fell  back  southward 
to  St.  Menehould.  Meanwhile  Kellermann  was 
coming  up  from  Metz  to  join  him,  and  all  the 
while  the  main  pass  at  "  Les  Islettes,"  through 
which  the  great  road  to  Paris  went,  continued 
to  be  held  by  the  French. 

The  Prussians  and  the  Austrians  joined 
forces  in  the  plain  known  as  the  Champagne 
Pouilleuse,  which  lies  westward  of  Argonne. 
It  wall  be  seen  that  as  they  marched  south 
along  this  plain  to  meet  Dumouriez  and  to 
defeat  him,  their  position  was  a  peculiar  one : 
they  were  nearer  the  enemy's  capital  than 
the  enemy's  army  was,  and  yet  they  had  to 
fight  with  their  backs  to  that  capital,  and 
their  enemy  the  French  had  to  fight  with  their 
faces  towards  it.  Moreover,  it  must  be  re- 
marked that  the  communications  of  the  Allied 
Army  were  now  of  a  twisted,  roundabout  sort, 
which  made  the  conveyance  of  provisions 
and  ammunition  slow  and  difficult — but  thev 
counted  upon  an  immediate  destruction  of 
Dumouriez'  force  and  after  that  a  rapid  march 
on  the  capital. 

On  September  19  Kellermann  came  up  from 
the  south  and  joined  hands  with  Dumouriez 
near  St.  Menehould,  and  on  the  morning  of 
the  20th  his  force  occupied  a  roll  of  land  on 
which  there  was  a  windmill  and  immediately 
behind  which  was  the  village  of  Valmy; 
from  this  village  the  ensuing  action  was 
to  take  its  name.  It  must  here  be  insisted 
upon  that  both  armies  had  been  subjected  to 
the  very  worst  weather  for  more  than  a  fort- 


160     THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

night,  but  of  the  two  the  Prussian  force  had 
suffered  from  this  accident  much  more  severely 
than  the  French.  Dysentery  had  already 
broken  out,  and  the  length  and  tortuousness 
of  their  communications  were  greatly  empha- 
sised by  the  condition  of  the  roads. 

On  the  morning  of  that  day,  the  20th  of 
September,  a  mist  impeded  all  decisive  move- 
ments. There  was  an  encounter,  half  acci- 
dental, between  an  advanced  French  battery 
and  the  enemy's  guns,  but  it  was  not  until 
mid-morning  that  the  weather  lifted  enough 
to  show  each  force  its  opponent.  Then  there 
took  place  an  action,  or  rather  a  cannonade, 
the  result  of  which  is  more  difficult  to  explain, 
perhaps,  than  any  other  considerable  action 
of  the  revolutionar37^  wars.  For  some  hours 
the  Prussian  artillery,  later  reinforced  by  the 
Austrian,  cannonaded  the  French  position, 
having  for  its  central  mark  the  windmill  oJE 
Valmy,  round  which  the  French  forces  were 
grouped.  At  one  moment  this  cannonade 
took  effect  upon  the  limbers  and  ammunition 
wagons  of  the  French;  there  was  an  explosion 
v/hich  all  eye-witnesses  have  remembered  as 
the  chief  feature  of  the  firing,  and  which  cer- 
tainly threw  into  confusion  for  some  moments 
the  ill-assorted  troops  under  Kellermann's 
command.  At  what  hour  this  took  place 
the  witnesses  who  have  left  us  accounts 
differ  to  an  extraordinary  extent.  Some  will 
have  it  at  noon,  others  towards  the  middle 
©f  the  afternoon — so  difficult  is  it  to  have 
any  accurate  account  of  what  happens  in  the 
heat  of  an  action.     At  any  rate,  if  not  coin- 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         161 

cidently  with  this  success,  at  some  moment 
not  far  removed  from  it,  the  Prussian  charge 
was  ordered,  and  it  is  here  that  the  difficulties 
of  the  historian  chiefly  appear.  That  charge 
was  never  carried  home  ;  whether,  as  some 
believe,  because  it  was  discovered,  after  it 
was  ordered,  to  be  impossible  in  the  face  of 
the  accuracy  and  intensity  of  the  French 
fire,  or  whether,  as  is  more  probably  the 
case,  because  the  drenched  soil  compelled 
the  commanders  to  abandon  the  movement 
after  it  had  begun — whatever  the  cause  may 
have  been,  the  Prussian  force,  though  ad- 
mirably disciplined  and  led,  and  though 
advancing  in  the  most  exact  order,  failed  to 
carry  out  its  original  purpose.  It  halted  half- 
May  up  the  slope,  and  the  action  remained 
a  mere  cannonade  without  immediate  result 
apparent  upon  either  side. 

Nevertheless  that  result  ultimately  turned 
out  to  be  very  great,  and  if  we  consider  its 
place  in  history,  quite  as  important  as  might 
have  been  the  result  of  a  decisive  action. 
In  the  first  place,  the  one  day's  delay  which 
it  involved  was  just  more  than  the  calculations 
of  the  Allies,  with  their  long  impeded  line 
of  communications,  had  allowed  for.  In  the 
next  place,  a  singular  increase  in  determina- 
tion and  moral  force  was  infused  into  the 
disheartened  and  ill-matched  troops  of  the 
French  commanders  by  this  piece  of  resistance. 

We  must  remember  that  the  French  force 
upon  the  whole  expected  and  discounted  a 
defeat,  the  private  soldier  especially  had  no 
confidence  in  the  result ;  and  to  find  that  at 

F 


162    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  first  action  which  had  been  so  long  threat- 
ened and  had  now  at  last  come,  he  could 
stand  up  to  the  enemy,  produced  upon  him 
an  exaggerated  effect  which  it  would  never 
have  had  under  other  circumstances. 

Finally,  we  must  recollect  that  whatever 
causes  had  forbidden  the  Prussian  charge  for- 
bade on  the  next  day  a  general  advance  against 
the  French  position.  And  all  the  time  the 
sickness  in  the  Prussian  camp  was  rapidly 
increasing.  Even  that  short  check  of  twenty- 
four  hours  made  a  considerable  difference. 
A  further  delay  of  but  yet  another  day,  during 
which  the  Allied  Army  could  not  decide 
whether  to  attack  at  once  or  to  stand  as 
they  were,  very  greatly  increased  the  list  of 
inefficients  from  illness. 

For  a  whole  week  of  increasing  anxiety  and 
increasing  inefficiency  the  Allied  Army  hung 
thus,  impotent,  though  they  were  between  the 
French  forces  and  the  capital.  Dumouriez 
ably  entertained  this  hesitation,  with  all  its 
accumulating  dangers  for  the  enemy,  by  pro- 
longed negotiations,  until  upon  the  30th  of 
September  the  Prussian  and  Austrian  organisa- 
tion could  stand  the  strain  no  longer,  and  its 
commanders  determined  upon  retreat.  It  was 
the  genius  of  Danton,  as  we  now  know,  that 
chiefly  organised  the  withdrawal  of  what  might 
still  have  been  a  dangerous  invading  force. 
It  is  principally  due  to  him  that  no  unwise 
Jingoism  w^as  permitted  to  claim  a  trial  of 
strength  with  the  invader,  that  he  was  allowed 
to  retire  with  all  his  guns,  his  colours  and  his 
train.     The  retreat  was  lengthy  and  unmo- 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         163 

lested,  though  watched  by  the  French  forces 
that  discreetly  shepherded  it  but  were  kept 
tightly  in  hand  from  Paris.  It  was  more  than 
three  weeks  later  when  the  Allied  Army,  upon 
which  Europe  and  the  French  monarchy  had 
counted  for  an  immediate  settlement  of  the 
Revolution,  re-crossed  the  frontier,  and  in 
this  doubtful  and  perhaps  inexplicable  fashion 
the  first  campaign  of  the  European  Powers 
against  the  Revolution  utterly  failed. 


THREE 

Following  upon  this  success,  Dumouriez 
pressed  on  to  what  had  been,  from  the  first 
moment  of  his  power  at  the  head  of  the  army, 
his  personal  plan — to  wit,  the  invasion  of  the 
Low  Countries. 

To  understand  why  this  invasion  failed  and 
why  Dumouriez  thought  it  might  succeed, 
we  must  appreciate  the  military  and  political 
situation  of  the  Low  Countries  at  the  time. 
They  then  formed  a  very  wealthy  and  cher- 
ished portion  of  the  Austrian  dominions  ; 
they  had  latterly  suffered  from  deep  dis- 
affection culminating  in  an  open  revolution, 
which  was  due  to  the  Emperor  of  Austria's 
narrow  and  intolerant  contempt  of  religion. 
From  his  first  foolish  policy  of  persecution 
and  confiscation  he  had  indeed  retreated,  but 
the  feeling  of  the  people  was  still  strongly 
opposed  to  the  Government  at  Vienna.  It 
is  remarkable,  indeed,  and  in  part  due  to  the 
pressure  of  a  strongly  Protestant  and  aris- 
tocratic state,  Holland,  to  the  north  of  them, 

F   2 


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164     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


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THE   MILITARY  ASPECT        165 

that  the  people  of  the  Austrian  Netherlands 
retained  at  that  time  a  peculiar  attachment 
to  the  Catholic  religion.  The  Revolution 
was  quite  as  anti-Catholic  as  the  Austrian 
Emperor,  but  of  the  persecution  of  the  latter 
the  Belgians  (as  we  now  call  them)  knew 
something;  that  of  the  former  they  had  not 
yet  learnt  to  dread.  It  was,  therefore, 
Dumouriez'  calculation  that,  in  invading  this 
province  of  the  Austrian  power,  he  would  be 
fighting  in  friendly  territory.  Again,  it  was 
separated  from  the  political  centre  of  the 
empire;  it  was,  therefore,  more  or  less  isolated 
politically,  and  even  for  military  purposes 
communication  with  it  was  not  so  easy, 
unless,  indeed,  Austria  could  count  on  a 
complete  co-operation  with  Prussia,  which 
Power  had  been  for  now  so  long  her  ruthless 
and  persistent  rival. 

Favourable,  however,  as  the  circumstances 
appeared  for  an  invasion,  two  factors  telling 
heavily  against  the  French  had  to  be  counted  : 
the  first  was  the  formation  of  their  army,  the 
second  the  spirit  of  rebellion  against  any 
anti-Catholic  Government  which  had  given 
such  trouble  to  Joseph  II. 

Of  these  two  factors  by  far  the  most  im- 
portant was,  of  course,  the  first.  If  the  French 
forces  had  been  homogeneous,  in  good  spirit, 
and  well  trained,  they  might  have  held  what 
they  won  ;  as  a  fact,  they  were  most  un- 
homogeneous,  great  portions  of  them  were 
ill  trained,  and,  worst  of  all,  there  was  no 
consistent  theory  of  subordmate  conunand. 
Men  who  imagined  that  subordinate,  that  is. 


166    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

regimental,  command  in  an  army  could  be 
erected  from  below,  and  that  a  fighting  force 
could  resemble  a  somewhat  lax  and  turbulent 
democracy,  marched  alongside  of  and  were 
actually  incorporated  with  old  soldiers  who 
had  spent  their  whole  careers  under  an  un- 
questioned discipline,  and  under  a  subordinate 
command  which  came  to  them  they  knew  not 
whence,  and  as  it  were  by  fate.  The  mere 
mixture  of  two  such  different  classes  of  men 
in  one  force  would  have  been  bad  enough 
to  deal  with,  but  what  was  worse,  the  politi- 
cal theories  of  the  day  fostered  the  military 
error  of  the  new  battalions  though  the  politi- 
cians dared  not  interfere  with  the  valuable 
organisation  of  the  old. 

The  invasion  of  the  Low  Countries  began 
with  a  great,  though  somewhat  informal  and 
unfruitful  success,  in  the  victory  of  Jemappes. 
It  was  the  first  striking  and  dramatic  deci- 
sive action  which  the  French,  always  of  an 
eager  appetite  for  such  news,  had  been  given 
since  between  forty  and  fifty  years.  The 
success  in  America  against  the  English, 
though  brilliantly  won  and  solidly  founded, 
had  not  presented  occasions  of  this  character, 
and  Fontenoy  was  the  last  national  victory 
which  Paris  could  remember.  Men  elderly 
or  old  in  this  autumn  of  1792  would  have 
been  boys  or  very  young  men  when  Fontenoy 
was  fought.  The  eager  generation  of  the 
Revolution,  with  its  military  appetites  and 
aptitudes,  as  yet  had  hardly  expected  victory, 
though  victory  was  ardently  desired  by  them 
and  peculiarly  suitable  to  their  temper. 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT        167 

It  may  be  imagined,  therefore,  what  an 
effect  the  news  of  Jemappes  had  upon  the 
poHtical  world  in  Paris.  The  action  was 
fought  just  below  the  town  of  Mons,  a  few 
miles  over  the  frontier,  and  consisted  in  a 
somewhat  ill-ordered  but  successful  advance 
across  the  River  Haine.  Whether  because  the 
Austrians,  with  an  inferior  force,  attempted 
to  hold  too  long  a  line,  or  because  the  infantry 
and  even  the  new  French  volunteer  battalions, 
as  yet  untried  by  fatigue,  proved  irresistible 
in  the  centre  of  the  movement,  Jemappes 
was  a  victory  so  complete  that  the  attempts 
of  apologists  to  belittle  it  only  serve  to  en- 
hance its  character. 

Like  many  another  great  and  apparently 
decisive  action,  however,  it  bore  no  lasting 
fruit.  Both  the  factors  of  which  I  have 
spoken  above  appeared  immediately  after 
this  success.  Belgium  was,  indeed,  over-run 
by  the  French,  but  in  their  over-running  of 
it  with  something  like  eighty  thousand  men, 
they  made  no  attempt  to  spare  the  traditions 
or  to  conciliate  the  sympathies  of  the  inhabit- 
ants. Hardly  was  Jemappes  won  when  Mons, 
the  neighbouring  fortified  frontier  town,  was 
at  once  endowed  with  the  whole  machinery  of 
revolutionary  government.  Church  property 
was  invaded  and  occasionally  rifled,  and  the 
French  paper  moi)ey,  the  assignats  of  which 
we  have  heard,  poured  in  to  disturb  and  in 
places  to  ruin  the  excellent  commercial  system 
upon  which  Belj^ium  then  as  now  reposed. 

Jemappes  was  fought  upon  the  6th  of 
November,  1792.     Brussels  was  entered  upon 


168    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  14th,  and  throughout  that  winter  the 
Low  Countries  lay  entirely  in  the  hands  ol 
the  French.  The  Commissioners  from  the 
Convention,  though  endowing  Belgium  with 
republican  institutions,  treated  it  as  a  con- 
quered country,  and  before  the  breaking  of 
spring,  the  French  Parliament  voted  its 
annexation  to  France.  This  annexation,  the 
determination  of  the  politicians  in  Paris  that 
the  new  Belgian  Government  should  be  re* 
publican  and  anti-Catholic,  the  maltreatment 
of  the  Church  in  the  occupied  country  and  the 
increasing  ill  discipline  and  lack  of  cohesion 
in  his  army,  left  Dumouriez  in  a  position 
which  grew  more  and  more  difficult  as  the 
new  year,  1793,  advanced.  It  must  be  re* 
membered  that  this  moment  exactly  corre- 
sponded  with  the  execution  of  the  King  and 
the  consequent  declaration  of  war  by  or 
against  France  in  the  case  of  one  Power  aftef 
another  throughout  Europe.  Meanwhile,  it 
was  decided,  foolishly  enough,  to  proceed 
from  the  difficult  occupation  of  Belgium  to 
the  still  more  difficult  occupation  of  Holland, 
and  the  siege  of  Maestricht  was  planned. 

The  moment  was  utterly  ill-suited  for  such 
a  plan.  Every  Executive  in  the  civilised 
world  was  coalescing  openly  or  secretly, 
directly  or  indirectly,  against  the  revolution- 
ary Government.  The  first  order  to  retreat 
came  upon  the  8th  of  March,  when  the  siege 
of  Maestricht  was  seen  to  be  impossible,  and 
when  the  great  forces  of  the  Allies  were 
gathered  again  to  attempt  what  was  to  be  the 
really  serious  attack  upon  the  Revolution  : 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT        169 

something  far  more  dangerous,  something 
which  much  more  nearly  achieved  success, 
than  the  march  of  the  comparatively  small 
force  which  had  been  checked  at  Valmy. 

For  ten  days  the  French  retreat  continued, 
when,  upon  the  18th  of  March,  Dumouriez 
risked  battle  at  Neerwinden.  His  army  was 
defeated. 

The  defeat  was  not  disastrous,  the  retreat 
was  continued  in  fairly  good  order,  but  a 
civilian  population  understands  nothing  be- 
sides the  words  defeat  and  victory;  it  can 
appreciate  a  battle,  not  a  campaign.  The 
news  of  the  defeat,  coming  at  a  moment  of 
crisis  in  the  politics  of  Paris,  was  decisive;  it 
led  to  grave  doubts  of  Dumouriez'  loyalty  to 
the  revolutionary  Government,  it  shattered 
his  popularity  with  those  who  had  continued 
to  believe  in  him,  while  the  general  himself 
could  not  but  believe  that  the  material  under 
his  command  was  rapidly  deteriorating.  Before 
the  end  of  the  month  the  army  had  abandoned 
all  its  conquests,  and  Valenciennes,  in  French 
territory,  was  reached  upon  the  27th.  The 
dash  upon  Belgium  had  wholly  failed. 

At  this  moment  came  one  of  those  political 
acts  which  so  considerably  disturb  any  purely 
military  conspectus  of  the  revolutionary 
wars.  Dumouriez,  at  the  head  of  his  army, 
which,  though  in  retreat  and  defeated,  was 
still  intact,  determined  upon  what  posterity 
has  justly  called  treason,  but  what  to  his 
own  mind  must  have  seemed  no  more  than 
statesmanship.  He  proposed  an  understand- 
ing with  the  enemy  and  a  combined  march 


170    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

mpon  Paris  to  restore  the  monarchical  govern- 
ment, and  put  an  end  to  what  seemed  to  him, 
as  a  soldier,  a  perfectly  hopeless  situation. 
He  certainly  believed  it  impossible  for  the 
French  army,  in  the  welter  of  1793,  to  defeat 
the  invader.  He  saw  his  own  life  in  peril 
merely  because  he  was  defeated.  He  had 
no  toleration  for  the  rising  enthusiasm  or 
delirium  of  the  political  theory  which  had 
sent  him  out,  and,  even  before  he  had  reached 
French  territory,  his  negotiations  with  Coburg, 
the  Austrian  commander,  had  begun.  They 
lasted  long.  Dumouriez  agreed  to  put  the 
frontier  fortresses  of  the  French  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy  as  a  guarantee  and  a 
pledge;  and  on  the  5th  of  April  all  was  ready 
for  the  alliance  of  the  two  armed  forces. 

But  just  as  the  treason  of  Dumouriez  is,  in 
the  military  sense,  abnormal  and  disturbing 
to  any  general  conspectus  of  the  campaign,  so 
was  the  action  of  his  army. 

The  doubtful  point  of  a  general  command 
which  is  political  in  nature,  and  may  be 
unpopular  with  the  rank  and  file,  lies,  of 
course,  in  the  attitude  of  the  commanders  of 
units,  and  these  unanimously  refused  to  obey 
the  orders  of  their  chief.  It  was  known  that 
Dumouriez  had  been  summoned  to  the  bar 
of  the  Convention,  which  body  had  sent 
commissioners  to  apprehend  him.  He  had 
arrested  the  commissioners,  and  had  handed 
them  over  as  hostages  and  prisoners  to  Coburg. 
So  far  from  Dumouriez  upon  the  critical  day 
handing  over  his  force  to  the  enemy,  or  con- 
stituting it  a  part  of  an  allied  army  to  march 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         171 

upon  the  capital,  he  was  compelled  to  fly  upon 
the  8th  of  April ;  all  that  disappeared  with  him, 
counting  many  who  later  deserted  back  again 
to  the  French  colours,  was  less  than  a  thou- 
sand men — and  these  foreign  mercenaries. 

The  consequence  of  this  strange  passage 
upon  the  political  history  of  the  time  we  have 
already  seen.  Its  consequence  upon  the 
military  history  of  it  was  indirect  but  pro- 
found. The  French  forces,  such  as  they  were, 
were  still  intact,  but  no  general  officer  could 
in  future  be  trusted  by  Paris,  and  the  stimulus 
which  nations  in  the  critical  moments  of 
invasion  and  of  danger  during  foreign  war 
seek  in  patriotism,  in  the  offering  of  a  high 
wage  to  the  men  and  of  honours  and  fortunes 
to  their  commanders,  was  now  sought  by  the 
French  in  the  singular,  novel  and  abnormal 
experiment  of  the  Terror.  Command  upon 
the  frontier  throughout  1793  and  the  first 
part  of  1794,  during  the  critical  fourteen 
months,  that  is,  which  decided  the  fate  of 
the  Revolution,  and  which  turned  the  tide 
of  arms  in  favour  of  the  French,  was  a  task 
accomplished  under  the  motive  power  of 
capital  punishment.  A  blunder  was  taken 
as  a  proof  of  treason,  and  there  lay  over  the 
ordering  of  every  general  movement  the  threat 
of  the  guillotine. 

What  we  have  now  to  follow  is  somewhat 
over  a  year  of  a  struggle  thus  abnormally 
organised  upon  the  French  side,  and  finally 
successful  through  the  genius  of  a  great 
organiser,  once  a  soldier,  now  a  politi- 
cian, Carnot.     The  French  succeeded  by  the 


172    THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

unshakable  conviction  which  permitted  the 
political  leaders  to  proceed  to  all  extremity 
in  their  determination  to  save  the  Revolution; 
by  the  peculiar  physical  powers  of  endurance 
which  their  army  displayed,  and  finally,  of 
course,  by  certain  accidents — for  accident  will 
always  be  a  determining  factor  in  war. 

The  spring  of  1793,  the  months  of  April 
and  May,  form  the  first  crisis  of  the  revolution- 
ary war.  The  attack  about  to  be  delivered 
is  universal,  and  seems  absolutely  certain  to 
succeed.  With  the  exception  of  the  rush 
at  Jemappes,  where  less  than  thirty  thousand 
Austrians  were  broken  through  by  a  torrent 
superior  in  numbers  (though  even  there  ob- 
viously ill-organised),  no  success  had  attended 
the  revolutionary  armies.  Their  condition  was, 
even  to  the  eye  of  the  layman,  bad,  and  to 
the  eye  of  the  expert  hopeless.  There  was  no 
unity  apparent  in  direction,  there  were  vast 
lesions  in  the  discipline  of  the  ranks  like  great 
holes  torn  in  some  rotten  fabric.  Even  against 
the  forces  already  mobilised  against  it,  it 
had  proved  powerless,  and  it  might  be  taken 
for  granted  that  by  an  act  more  nearly 
resembling  police  work  than  a  true  campaign, 
the  Allies  would  reach  Paris  and  something 
resembling  the  old  order  be  soon  restored. 
What  remains  is  to  follow  the  process  by 
which   this  expectation  was  disappointed. 

The  situation  at  this  moment  can  best  be 
understood  by  a  glance  at  the  sketch  map  on 
p.  178.  Two  great  French  advances  had 
been  made  in  the  winter  of  1792-93;  the  one 
a   northern    advance,    which   we   have   just 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT        173 

detailed,  the  over-running  of  Belgium;  the 
other  an  eastern  advance  right  up  to  the 
Rhine  and  to  the  town  of  Mayence.  Both  had 
failed.  The  failure  in  Belgium,  culminating 
in  the  treason  of  Dumouriez,  has  been  read. 
On  the  Rhine  (where  Mayence  had  been 
annexed  by  the  French  Parliament  just  as 
Belgium  had  been)  the  active  hostility  of 
the  population  and  the  gathering  of  the 
organised  forces  of  the  Allies  had  the  same 
effect  as  had  been  produced  in  the  Low 
Countries. 

It  was  on  March  21, 1793,  that  the  Prussians 
crossed  the  Rhine  at  Bacharach,  and  within 
that  week  the  French  commander,  Custine, 
began  to  fall  back.  On  the  first  of  April  he 
was  back  again  in  French  territory,  leaving  the 
garrison  of  Mayence,  somewhat  over  twenty 
thousand  men,  to  hold  out  as  best  it  could; 
a  fortnight  later  the  Prussians  had  surrounded 
the  town  and  the  siege  had  begun. 

On  the  north-eastern  front,  stretching  from 
the  Ardennes  to  the  sea,  a  similar  state  of 
things  was  developing.  There,  a  barrier  of 
fortresses  stood  between  the  Allies  and  Paris, 
and  a  series  of  sieges  corresponding  to  the 
siege  of  Mayence  in  the  east  had  to  be  under- 
taken. At  much  the  same  time  as  the  in- 
vestment of  Mayence,  on  April  9,  the  first 
step  in  this  military  ta.sk  was  taken  by  the 
Allies  moving  in  between  the  fortress  of  Conde 
and  the  fortress  of  Valenciennes.  Thence- 
forward it  was  the  business  of  the  Austrians 
under  Coburg,  with  the  Allies  that  were  to 
reach  him,  to  reduce  the  frontier  fortresses 


174    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

one  by  one,  and  when  his  communications 
were  thus  secure,  to  march  upon  Paris, 

It  is  here  necessary  for  the  reader  imac- 
quainted  with  military  history  to  appreciate 
two  points  upon  which  not  a  little  of  contem- 
porary historical  writing  may  mislead  him. 
The  first  is  that  both  in  the  Rhine  valley 
and  on  the  Belgian  frontier  the  forces  of  the 
Allies  in  their  numbers  and  their  organisa- 
tion were  conceived  to  be  overwhelming.  The 
second  is  that  no  competent  commander  on 
the  spot  would  have  thought  of  leaving  behind 
him  the  garrison  of  even  one  untaken  fortress. 
It  is  important  to  insist  upon  these  points, 
because  the  political  passions  roused  by  the 
Revolution  are  still  so  strong  that  men  can 
hardly  write  of  it  without  prejudice  and  bias, 
and  two  errors  continually  present  in  these 
descriptions  of  the  military  situation  in  the 
spring  of  1793,  are,  first,  that  the  Allies  were 
weakened  by  the  Polish  question,  which  was 
then  active,  and  secondly,  that  the  delay  of 
their  commanders  before  the  French  fortresses 
was  unnecessary. 

Both  these  propositions  are  put  forward 
with  the  object  of  explaining  the  ultimate 
defeat  of  the  enemies  of  the  Revolution : 
both,  however  great  the  authority  behind 
them,  are  unhistorical  and  worthless.  The 
French  success  was  a  military  success  due  to 
certain  military  factors  both  of  design  and 
accident,  which  will  appear  in  what  follows. 
The  Allies  played  their  part  as  all  the  art  of 
war  demanded  it  to  be  played;  they  were 
ultimately  defeated,  not  from  the  commission 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT        175 

of  any  such  gross  and  obvious  error  in  policy 
or  strategy  as  historians  with  too  little  compre- 
hension of  military  affairs  sometimes  pretend, 
but  from  the  military  superiority  of  their 
opponents. 

It  is  true  that  the  Polish  question  (that  is  the 
necessity  the  Austrian  and  Prussian  Govern- 
ments were  each  under  of  watching  that  the 
other  was  not  lessened  in  importance  by  the 
approaching  annexations  of  further  Polish 
territory  with  the  consequent  jealousy  and 
mistrust  that  arose  from  this  between  Austria 
and  Prussia)  was  a  very  important  feature  of 
the  moment.  But  it  is  bad  military  history 
to  pretend  that  this  affected  the  military 
situation  on  the  Rhine  or  in  the  Netherlands. 

Every  campaign  is  conditioned  by  its 
political  object.  The  political  object  in  this 
case  was  to  march  upon  and  to  occupy  Paris. 
The  political  object  of  a  campaign  once  deter- 
mined, the  size  and  the  organisation  of  the 
enemv  are  calculated  and  a  certain  force  is 
brought  against  it.  No  much  larger  force  is 
brought  than  is  necessary  :  to  act  in  such  a 
fashion  would  be  in  military  art  what  paying 
two  or  three  times  the  price  of  an  article 
M^ould  be  in  commerce.  The  forces  of  the 
Allies  upon  the  Rhine  and  in  the  Netherlands 
were,  in  the  opinion  of  every  authority  of 
the  time,  amply  sufiicient  for  their  purpose; 
and  more  than  sufficient :  so  much  more  than 
sufficient  that  the  attitude  of  that  military 
opinion  which  had  to  meet  the  attack — to  wit, 
the  professional  military  opinion  of  the  French 
republican  soldiers,  was    that   the   situation 


176    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

was  desperate,  nor  indeed  was  it  attempted 
to  be  met  save  by  a  violent  and,  as  it  were, 
irrational  enthusiasm. 

The  second  point,  the  so-called  *'  delay  " 
involved  in  the  sieges  undertaken  by  the 
Allies,  proves,  when  it  is  put  forward,  an 
insufficient  acquaintance  with  contemporary 
conditions.  Any  fortress  with  a  considerable 
garrison  left  behind  untaken  would  have 
meant  the  destruction  of  the  Austrian  or 
Prussian  communications,  and  their  destruc- 
tion at  a  moment  when  the  Austrian  and 
Prussian  forces  were  actually  advancing  over 
a  desperately  hostile  country.  Moreover, 
when  acting  against  forces  wholly  inferior 
in  discipline  and  organisation,  an  untaken 
fortress  is  a  refuge  which  one  must  take 
peculiar  pains  to  destroy.  To  throw  him- 
self into  such  a  refuge  will  always  stand 
before  the  commander  of  those  inferior 
forces  as  a  last  resource.  It  is  a  refuge  which 
he  will  certainly  avail  himself  of  ultimately, 
if  it  is  permitted  to  him.  And  when  he  has 
so  availed  himself  of  it,  it  means  the  indefinite 
survival  of  an  armed  organisation  in  the  rear 
of  the  advancing  invaders.  We  must  con- 
clude, if  we  are  to  understand  this  critical 
campaign  which  changed  the  history  of  the 
world,  that  Coburg  did  perfectly  right  in 
laying  siege  to  one  fortress  after  another 
before  he  began  what  every  one  expected  to 
be  the  necessarily  successful  advance  on 
Paris.  The  French  despair,  as  one  town  after 
another  surrendered,  is  an  amply  sufficient 
proof  of  the  excellence  of  his  judgment. 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         177 

We  approach  the  military  problem  of  1793, 
therefore,  with  the  following  two  fields  clear 
before  us  : — 

1.  In  the  north-east  an  advance  on  Paris, 
the  way  to  which  is  blocked  by  a  quadrilateral 
of  fortresses:  Mons,  Maubeuge,  Conde,  and 
Valenciennes,  with  the  subsidiary  stronghold 
of  Lequesnoy  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
last.  Mons  has  been  in  Austrian  hands 
since  Dunioiuriez'  retreat ;  Conde  is  just  cut 
off  from  Valenciennes  by  Coburg's  advance, 
but  has  not  fallen ;  Valenciennes  and  the 
neighbouring  Lequesnoy  are  still  intact,  and 
so  is  Maubeuge.  All  must  be  reduced  before 
the  advance  on  Paris  can  begin.  Behind 
these  fortresses  is  a  French  army  incapable 
as  yet  of  attacking  Coburg's  command  with 
any  hope  of  success.  Such  is  the  position 
in  the  last  fortnight  of  April. 

2.  Meanwhile,  on  the  Rhine  the  French 
garrison  in  Mayence  is  besieged;  Custine,  the 
French  commander  in  that  quarter,  has  fallen 
back  on  the  French  town  of  Landau,  and  is 
drawing  up  what  are  known  in  history  as  the 
Lines  of  Weissembourg.  The  accompanying 
sketch  map  explains  their  importance.  Repos- 
ing upon  the  two  obstacles  of  the  river  on  the 
right  and  the  mountains  on  the  left,  they  ful- 
filled precisely  the  same  functions  as  a  fortress ; 
and  those  functions  w^e  have  just  described. 
Until  these  lines  were  carried,  the  whole  of 
Alsace  may  be  regarded  as  a  fortress  defended 
by  the  mountains  and  the  river  on  two  sides, 
and  by  the  Lines  of  Weissembourg  on  the 
third. 


/' 


178    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

A  reader  unacquainted  with  military  history 
may  ask  why  the  obstruction  was  not  drawn 
upon  the  hne  of  the  Prussian  advance  on 
Paris.  The  answer  is  that  the  preserce  of 
a  force  behind  fortifications  anywhere  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  a  Hne  of  communication 
is  precisely  equivalent  to  an  obstacle  lying 
right  upon  those  lines.  For  no  commander 
can  go  forward  along  the  line  of  his  advance 
and  leave  a  large  undestroyed  force  close  to 
one  side  of  that  line,  and  so  situated  that  it 

Oiink'rlt 

\-  .      ^  ..» 

Vr/effciarnes .  F^--*^^'/ 

Blacking  V^cf-~1 

Atfvmice  on  Ftht      '-'''^"•^SJ 
/  from  HE.  ^^       ^     -^i  /*r.«^ir7 


Strategic  situation  in  early  summer  of  1793.  Mayence 
besieged,  Oond^  and  Valenciennes  about  to  be  besieged. 
Conditions  of  the  double  advance  on  Paris. 

can  come  out  when  he  has  passed  and  cut 
off  his  communications ;  for  it  is  by  com- 
munications that  an  army  lives,  especially 
when  it  is  marching  in  hostile  country. 

Custine,  therefore,  behind  his  Lines  of 
Weissembourg,  and  the  besieged  garrison  in 
Mayence,  correspond  to  the  barrier  of  fortresses 
on  the  north-east  and  delayed  the  advance  of 
the  Prussians  under  Wurmser  and  Brunswick 
from  the  Rhine,  just  as  Conde,  Valenciennes, 
and    Maubeuge    prevented   the    advance    of 


\         THE  MILITARY  ASPECT        179 

Coburg  on  the  north-east.  Such  in  general 
was  the  situation  upon  the  eastern  frontier 
at  the  end  of  that  month  of  April,  1793. 


FOUR 

Let  us  first  follow  the  development  of  the 
northern  position.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  all  Europe  was  at  war  against  the  French. 
The  Austrians  had  for  allies  Dutch  troops 
which  joined  them  at  this  moment,  and 
certain  English  and  Hanoverian  troops  under 
the  Duke  of  York  who  also  joined  them. 

At  this  moment,  when  Coburg  found  him- 
self in  increasing  strength,  a  tentative  French 
attack  upon  him  was  delivered  and  failed. 
Dampierre,  who  was  in  command  of  all  this 
French  "  Army  of  the  North,"  was  killed, 
and  Custine  was  sent  to  replace  him.  The 
Army  of  the  North  did  not,  as  perhaps  it 
should  have  done,  concentrate  into  one  body 
to  meet  Coburg's  threatened  advance;  it  was 
perpetually  attempting  diversions  which  were 
useless  because  its  strength  was  insufficient. 
Now  it  feinted  upon  the  right  towards  Namur, 
now  along  the  sea  coast  on  the  left;  and  these 
diversions  failed  in  their  object.  Before  the 
end  of  the  month,  Coburg,  to  give  himself 
elbow  room,  as  it  were,  for  the  sieges  which 
he  was  preparing,  compelled  the  main  French 
force  to  retreat  to  a  position  well  behind 
Valenciennes.  It  was  immediately  after  this 
success  of  Coburg's  that  Custine  arrived  to 
take  command  on  the  Belgian  frontier,  his 
place  on  the  Rhine  being  taken  by  Houchard. 


/ 


180    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Custine  was  a  very  able  commander,  but 
a  most  unlucky  one.  His  plan  was  the  right 
one :  to  concentrate  all  the  French  forces 
(abandoning  the  Rhine)  and  so  form  an  army 
sufficient  to  cope  with  Coburg's.  The  Govern- 
ment would  not  meet  him  in  this,  and  he  de- 
voted himself  immediately  to  the  reorganisa- 
tion of  the  Army  of  the  North  alone.  The 
month  of  June  and  half  of  July  was  taken  up 
in  that  task. 

Meanwhile,  the  Austrian  siege  work  had 
begun,  and  Conde  was  the  first  object  of  its 
attention.  Upon  July  10  Conde  fell.  Mean- 
while Custine  had  been  recalled  to  Paris, 
and  Valenciennes  was  invested.  Custine  was 
succeeded  by  Kilmaine,  a  general  of  Irish 
extraction,  who  maintained  his  position  for 
but  a  short  time,  and  was  unable  while  he 
maintained  it  to  do  anything.  The  forces  of 
the  Allies  continually  increased.  The  number 
at  Coburg's  disposal  free  from  the  business  of 
besieging  Valenciennes  was  already  larger  than 
the  force  required  for  that  purpose.  And 
yet  another  fifteen  thousand  Hessian  troops 
marched  in  while  the  issue  of  that  siege  was 
in  doubt.  This  great  advantage  in  numbers 
permitted  him  to  get  rid  of  the  main  French 
force  that  was  still  present  in  front  of  him, 
though  not  seriously  annoying  him. 

This  force  lay  due  south-west  of  Valen- 
ciennes, and  about  a  day's  march  distant. 
He  depended  for  the  capture  of  it  upon  his 
English  and  Hanoverian  Allies  under  the 
Duke  of  York,  but  that  general's  march  failed. 
The  distance  was  too  much  for  his  troops  in 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         181 

the  hot  summer  weather,  and  the  French 
were  able  to  retreat  behind  the  Hne  of  the 
Scarpa  and  save  their  army  intact. 

The  Duke  of  York's  talents  have  been 
patriotically  exaggerated  in  many  a  treatise. 
He  always  failed :  and  this  was  among  the 
most  signal  of  his  failures. 

Kilmaine  had  hardly  escaped  from  York, 
drawn  up  his  army  behind  the  Scarpe  and 
put  it  into  a  position  of  safety  when  he 
in  his  turn  was  deprived  of  the  command, 
and  Houchard  was  taken  from  the  Rhine 
just  as  Custine  had  been,  and  put  at  the 
head  of  the  Army  of  the  North.  Before  the 
main  French  army  had  taken  up  this  position 
of  isafety,  Valenciennes  had  fallen.  It  fell  on 
the  28th  of  July,  and  its  fall,  inevitable  though 
it  was  and,  as  one  may  say,  taken  for  granted 
by  military  opinion,  was  much  the  heaviest 
blow  yet  delivered.  Nothing  of  importance 
remained  to  block  the  march  of  the  Armies 
of  the  Allies,  save  Maubeuge. 

At  about  the  same  moment  occurred  three 
very  important  changes  in  the  general  military 
situation,  which  the  reader  must  note  if  he 
is  to  understand  what  follows. 

The  first  was  the  sudden  serious  internal 
menace  opposed  to  the  Republican  Govern- 
ment; the  second  was  the  advent  of  Carnot 
to  power;  the  third  was  the  English  diversion 
upon  Dunquerque. 

The  serious  internal  menace  which  the 
Government  of  the  Republic  had  to  face  was 
the  widespread  rebellion  which  has  been  dealt 
with  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  book.     The 


182    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

action  of  the  Paris  Radicals  against  the 
Girondins  had  raised  whole  districts  in  the 
provinces.  Marseilles,  which  had  shown  signs 
of  disaffection  since  April,  and  had  begun  to 
raise  a  local  reactionary  force,  revolted.  So  did 
Bordeaux,  Nimes,  and  other  great  southern 
towns.  Lyons  had  risen  at  the  end  of  May 
and  had  killed  the  Jacobin  mayor  of  the 
town  in  the  period  between  the  fall  of  Cond6 
and  that  of  Valenciennes.  The  troop  which 
Marseilles  had  raised  against  the  Republic 
was  defeated  in  the  field  only  the  day  before 
Valenciennes  fell,  but  the  great  seaport  was 
still  unoccupied  by  the  forces  of  the  Govern- 
ment. The  Norman  march  upon  Paris  had 
also  failed  between  those  two  dates,  the  fall 
of  Conde  and  the  fall  of  Valenciennes^  The 
Norman  bark  had  proved  worse  than  the 
Norman  bite;  but  the  force  was  so  neigh- 
bouring to  the  capital  that  it  took  a  very 
large  place  in  the  preoccupations  of  the  time. 
The  Vendean  revolt,  though  its  triumphant 
advance  was  checked  before  Nantes  a  fort- 
night before  the  fall  of  Conde,  was  still 
vigorous,  and  the  terrible  reprisals  against 
it  were  hardly  begun.  Worst  of  all,  or 
at  least,  worst  perhaps,  after  the  revolt  of 
Lyons,  was  the  defection  of  Toulon.  Toulon 
rose  tw^o  days  before  the  fall  of  Valenciennes, 
and  was  prepared  to  hand  itself  over  (as  at 
last  it  did  hand  itself  over)  to  occupation 
by  the  English  fleet. 

The  dates  thus  set  in  their  order  may 
somewhat  confuse  the  reader,  and  I  will 
therefore  summarise  the  general   position  of 


THE  MILITARY    ASPECT         183 

the  internal  danger  thus  :  A  man  in  the  French 
camp  on  the  Scheldt,  listening  to  the  guns 
before  Valenciennes  fifteen  miles  away,  and 
hourly  expecting  their  silence  as  a  signal 
that  the  city  had  surrendered,  would  have 
heard  by  one  post  after  another  how  Mar- 
seilles still  held  out  against  the  Government; 
how  the  counter-attack  against  the  successful 
Vendeans  had  but  doubtfully  begun  (all  July 
was  full  of  disasters  in  that  quarter);  how 
Lyons  was  furiously  successful  in  her  rebellion 
and  had  dared  to  put  to  death  the  Republican 
mayor  of  the  town ;  and  that  the  great  arsenal 
and  port  at  Toulon,  the  Portsmouth  of  France 
upon  the  Mediterranean,  had  sickened  of  the 
Government  and  was  about  to  admit  the 
English  fleet.  His  only  comfort  would  have 
been  to  hear  that  the  Norman  march  on  Paris 
had  failed — but  he  would  still  be  under  the 
impression  of  it  and  of  the  murder  of  Marat 
by  a  Norman  woman. 

There  is  the  picture  of  that  sudden  internal 
struggle  which  coincides  with  this  moment  of 
the  revolutionary  war,  the  moment  of  the 
fall  of  Cond6  and  of  Valenciennes,  and  the 
exposure  of  the  frontier. 

The  second  point,  the  advent  of  Carnot  into 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  which  has 
already  been  touched  upon  in  the  political 
part  of  this  work,  has  so  preponderating  a 
military  significance  that  we  miust  consider 
it  here  also. 

The  old  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  it  will 
be  remembered,  reached  the  end  of  its  legal 
term   on  July   10.     It   was   the   Committee 


184    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

which  the  wisdom  of  Danton  had  controlled. 
The  members  elected  to  the  new  Committee 
did  not  include  Carnot,  but  the  military 
genius  of  this  man  was  already  public.  He 
came  of  that  strong  middle  class  which  is 
the  pivot  upon  which  the  history  of  modern 
Europe  turns ;  a  Burgundian  with  lineage, 
intensely  republican,  he  had  been  returned 
to  the  Convention  and  had  voted  for  the 
death  of  the  King;  a  sapper  before  the  Re- 
volution, and  one  thoroughly  well  grounded 
in  his  arm  and  in  general  reading  of  military 
things,  he  had  been  sent  by  the  Convention 
to  the  Army  of  the  North  on  commission, 
he  had  seen  its  weakness  and  had  watched 
its  experiments.  Upon  his  return  he  was  not 
immediately  selected  for  the  post  in  which 
he  was  to  transform  the  revolutionary  war. 
It  was  not  until  the  14th  of  August  that  he 
was  given  a  temporary  place  upon  the  Com- 
mittee which  his  talents  very  soon  made 
permanent.  He  was  given  the  place  merely 
as  a  stopgap  to  the  odious  and  incompetent 
fanatic,  Saint- Andre,  who  was  for  the  moment 
away  on  mission.  But  from  the  day  of  his 
admission  his  superiority  in  military  affairs 
was  so  incontestable  that  he  was  virtually 
a  dictator  therein,  and  his  first  action  after 
the  general  lines  of  organisation  had  been 
laid  down  by  him  was  to  impose  upon  the 
frontier  armies  the  necessity  of  concentration. 
He  introduced  what  afterwards  Napoleon 
inherited  from  him,  the  tactical  venture  of 
"  all  upon  one  throw." 
It    must    be    remembered    that    Carnot's 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         185 

success  did  not  lie  in  any  revolutionary  dis- 
covery in  connection  with  the  art  of  war, 
but  rather  in  that  vast  capacity  for  varied 
detail  which  marks  the  organiser,  and  in  an 
intimate  sympathy  with  the  national  char- 
acter. He  understood  the  contempt  for 
parade,  the  severity  or  brutality  of  discipline, 
the  consciousness  of  immense  powers  of  en- 
durance which  are  in  the  Frenchman  when 
he  becomes  a  soldier; — and  he  made  use  of 
this  understanding  of  his. 

It  must  be  further  remembered  that  this 
powerful  genius  had  behind  him  in  these 
first  days  of  his  activity  the  equally  powerful 
genius  of  Danton;  for  it  was  Danton  and  he 
who  gave  practical  shape  to  that  law  of 
conscription  by  which  the  French  Revolution 
suddenly  increased  its  armed  forces  by  nearly 
half  a  million  of  men,  restored  the  Roman 
tradition,  and  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
armed  system  on  which  Europe  to-day 
depends.  With  Carnot  virtually  commander- 
in-chief  of  all  the  armies,  and  enabled  to  im- 
pose his  decisions  in  particular  upon  that  Army 
of  the  North  which  he  had  studied  so  recently 
as  a  commissioner,  the  second  factor  of  the 
situation  I  am  describing  is  comprehended. 

The  third,  as  I  have  said,  was  the  English 
diversion  upon  Dunquerque. 

The  subsequent  failure  of  the  Allies  has 
led  to  bitter  criticism  of  this  movement. 
Had  the  Allies  not  failed,  history  would  have 
treated  it  as  its  contemporaries  treated  it. 
The  forces  of  the  Allies  on  the  north-eastern 
frontier  were  so  great  and  their  confidence 


186    THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

so  secure — especially  after  the  fall  of  Valen- 
ciennes— that  the  English  proposal  to  with- 
draw their  forces  for  the  moment  from  Coburg's 
and  to  secure  Dunquerque,  was  not  received 
with  any  destructive  criticism.  Eighteen 
battalions  and  fourteen  squadrons  of  the  Im- 
perial forces  were  actually  lent  to  the  Duke 
of  York  for  this  expedition.  What  is  more, 
even  after  that  diversion  failed,  the  plan  was 
fixed  to  begin  again  when  the  last  of  the 
other  fortresses  should  have  fallen  :  so  little 
was  the  English  plan  for  the  capture  of  the 
seaport  disfavoured  by  the  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  Allies. 

That  diversion  on  Dunquerque  turned  out, 
however,  to  be  an  error  of  capital  importance. 
The  attempt  to  capture  the  city  utterly  failed, 
and  the  victory  which  accompanied  its  re- 
pulsion had  upon  the  French  that  indefinable 
but  powerful  moral  effect  which  largely 
contributed  to  their  future  successes. 

The  accomi3anying  sketch  map  will  explain 
the  position.  Valenciennes  and  Conde  have 
fallen;  Lequesnoy,  the  small  fortress  sub- 
sidiary to  Valenciennes,  has  not  yet  been 
attacked  but  comes  next  in  the  series,  when 
the  moment  was  judged  propitious  for  the 
detachment  of  the  Anglo-Hanoverian  force 
with  a  certain  number  of  Imperial  Allies  to 
march  to  the  sea. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  by  the  reader 
of  history  that  military  situations,  like  the 
situations  upon  a  chess  board,  rather  happen 
than  are  designed;  and  the  situation  which 
developed  at  the  end  of  September  upon  the 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT 


187 


188    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

extreme  north  and  west  of  the  line  which  the 
French  were  attempting  to  hold  against  the 
Allies  was  strategically  of  this  nature.  When 
the  Duke  of  York  insisted  upon  a  division  of 
the  forces  of  the  Allies  and  an  attack  upon 
Dunquerque,  no  living  contemporary  foresaw 
disaster. 

Coburg,  indeed,  would  have  preferred  the 
English  to  remain  with  him,  and  asked  them 
to  do  so,  but  he  felt  in  no  sort  of  danger 
through  their  temporary  absence,  nor,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  was  he  in  any  danger  through 
it. 

Again,  though  the  positions  which  the 
Duke  of  York  took  up  when  he  arrived  in 
front  of  Dunquerque  were  bad,  neither  his 
critics  at  home,  nor  any  of  his  own  sub- 
ordinates, nor  any  of  the  enemy,  perceived 
fully  how  bad  they  were.  It  was,  as  will 
presently  be  seen,  a  sort  of  drift,  bad  luck 
combined  with  bad  management,  which  led 
to  this  British  disaster,  and  (what  was  all- 
important  for  the  conduct  of  the  war)  to  the 
first  success  in  a  general  action  which  the 
French  had  to  flatter  and  encourage  them- 
selves with  during  all  that  fatal  summer. 

The  Duke  of  York  separated  his  force  from 
that  of  Coburg  just  before  the  middle  of 
August ;  besides  the  British,  who  were  not 
quite  7,000  strong,  11,000  Austrians,  over 
10,000  Hanoverians  and  7,000  Hessians  were 
under  his  command.  The  total  force,  there- 
fore, was  nearly  37,000  strong.  No  one 
could  imagine  that,  opposed  by  such  troops 
as  the  French  were  able  to  put  into  line, 


THE   MILITARY   ASPECT         189 

and  marching  against  such  wretched  de- 
fences as  those  of  Dunquerque  then  were,  the 
Duke's  army  had  not  a  perfectly  easy  task 
before  it;  and  the  plan,  which  was  to  take 
Punquerque  and  upon  the  return  to  join  the 
Austrian  march  on  Paris,  was  reasonable  and 
feasible. 

It  is  important  that  the  reader  should 
firmly  seize  this  and  not  read  history  back- 
ward from  future  events. 

Certain  faults  are  to  be  observed  in  the 
first  conduct  of  the  march.  It  began  on  the 
15th  of  August,  proceeding  from  Marchiennes 
to  Menin,  and  at  the  outset  displayed  that 
deplorable  lack  of  marching  power  which 
the  Duke  of  York's  command  had  shown 
throughout  the  campaign.^  From  Marchi- 
ennes to  Tourcoing  is  a  long  day's  march  : 
it  took  the  Duke  of  York  four  days;  and, 
take  the  march  altogether,  nine  days  were 
spent  in  covering  less  than  forty  miles.  In 
the  course  of  that  march,  the  British  troops 
had  an  opportunity  of  learning  to  despise 
their  adversary  :  they  found  at  Linselles,  upon 
the  flank  of  their  advance,  a  number  of  un- 
disciplined boys  who  broke  the  moment  the 
Guards  were  upon  them,  and  whose  physical 
condition  excited  the  ridicule  of  their  assail- 
ants.    The  army  proceeded  after  this  purpose- 

*  Incidentany  it  should  be  noted  how  true  it  is  that  this 
supreme  military  quality  is  a  matter  of  organisatiou  rather 
than  of  the  physical  power  of  troops  ;  in  the  Napoleonic 
wars  the  marching  power  of  the  English  troops  was  often 
proved  exceptional^  and  perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  feats 
accomplished  by  a  small  body  was  that  of  the  Light  Brigade 
marching  to  the  succour  of  Wellington  at  Talavera. 


190    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 


less  and  unfruitful  skirmish  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  sea  coast,  and  the  siege  of 
Dunquerque  was  undertaken  under  conditions 
which  will  be  clear  to  the  reader  from  the 
following  sketch  map. 

The  date  of  the  20th  of  August  must  first 
be  fixed  in  the  mind  :  on  that  date  the  army 
which  was  to  take  Dunquerque  was  separated 


FliRHl\ 


Hondschoo^e 


W- 


/'     •      >      «      * 


W'/IJtr 


S€»i*  eC  ti^llfUi 


i< 


••»  Frtytspt  army  of  \\ 

wHfi^raw on /fOAdschto/r  tcfu^  .t^e French  ''A^itnc*. 


Operations  round  Dunquerque.     September  1793. 

into  its  two  component  parts.  The  first, 
under  the  Duke  of  York,  was  to  attack  the 
town  itself;  the  second,  under  the  aged  Aus- 
trian general,  Freytag,  was  to  watch  the  move- 
ment of  any  approaching  enemy  and  to  cover 
the  force  which  was  besieging  the  town.  Two 
days  later,  the  Duke  of  York  was  leaving 
Furnes,  which  he  had  made  his  base  for  the 
advance,  and  Freytag  had  with  the  greatest 


I 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         191 

ease  brushed  the  French  posts — mainly  of 
volunteers — from  before  him,  and  was  begin- 
ning to  take  up  the  flanking  positions  south 
and  east  of  Bergues  which  covered  the  siege 
of  Dunquerque. 

Two  days  later  again,  on  August  24, 
Freytag  had  occupied  Wormhoudt  and  Es- 
quelbecque,  capturing  guns  by  the  dozen, 
doing  pretty  well  what  he  w^ould  with  the 
French  outposts,  and  quite  surrounding  the 
town  of  Bergues.  Wilder  was  his  head- 
quarters. On  the  same  day,  the  24th,  the 
Duke  of  York  had  with  the  greatest  ease 
driven  in  the  advanced  posts  of  the  French 
before  Dunquerque,  and  shut  up  the  enemy 
within  the  town,  while  he  formed  his  be- 
sieging force  outside  of  it,  entrenched  in 
a  position  which  he  had  chosen  beforehand, 
reposing  upon  the  sea  at  his  right,  his  left 
on  the  village  of  Tetteghem.  He  was  then 
about  3,000  yards  from  the  fortifications  at 
Dunquerque. 

Such  was  the  situation  upon  the  dawn  of 
the  25th,  when  everything  was  ready  for 
active  operations.  And  here  the  reader  must 
look  upon  the  map  for  what  ultimately  proved 
the  ruin  of  the  situation. 

Supposing  Freytag  round  Bergues  in  the 
position  which  the  map  shows;  the  Duke 
of  York  in  front  of  Dunquerque  as  the  map 
also  shows  him;  the  two  forces  are  in  touch 
across  the  road  and  the  belt  of  country 
which  unites  Bergues  and  Dunquerque.  The 
covering  army  and  the  besieging  force  which 
it  covers  are  each  a  wing  of  one  combined 


192    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

body  ;  each  communicates  with  the  other, 
each  can  support  the  other  at  the  main  point 
of  effort,  and  though  between  the  one  and 
the  other  eastward  there  stretches  a  Hne  of 
marshy  country — the  "  meres  "  which  the 
map  indicates — yet  a  junction  between  the 
two  forces  exists  westward  of  these,  and  the 
two  armies  can  co-operate  by  the  Bergues- 
Dunquerque  road. 

A  factor  which  the  Duke  of  York  may 
have  neglected  was  the  power  of  flooding  all 
that  flat  country  round  the  road  which  the 
French  in  Dunquerque,  being  in  possession 
of  the  sluices,  possessed.  They  used  it  at 
once  :  they  drowned  the  low  lands  to  the 
south  of  Dunquerque,  upon  the  very  day 
when  the  last  dispositions  of  the  attacking 
force  were  completed.  But  more  important 
— and  never  yet  explained — was  the  Aus- 
trians'  abandonment  of  Coudequerque.  By 
this  error,  the  main  road  itself,  standing 
above  the  flood,  was  lost,  and  from  being  one 
strong  army  the  force  of  the  Allies  became 
two  weak  ones.  Communication  was  no 
longer  possible  between  the  Duke  of  York's 
and  Freytag's  territories,  and  it  was  of  this 
separation  that  the  French,  in  spite  of  their 
deplorable  organisation  and  more  deplorable 
personnel,  took  advantage. 

They  took  advantage  of  it  slowly.  Houchard 
gathered  altogether  forty  thousand  men  near 
Cassel,  but  it  was  ten  days  before  they  could 
be  concentrated.  It  must  again  be  insisted 
upon  and  repeated  that,  large  as  the  number 
was — it  was  four  times  as  great  as  Freytag's 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         193 

now  isolated  force — Houchard's  command 
was  made  up  of  men  quite  two-thirds  of 
whom  were  hardly  soldiers  :  volunteers  both 
new  and  recent,  ill-trained  conscripts  and 
so  forth.  There  was  no  basis  of  discipline, 
hardly  any  power  to  enforce  it;  the  men  had 
behaved  disgracefully  in  all  the  affairs  of 
outposts,  they  had  been  brushed  away  con- 
temptuously by  the  small  Austrian  force 
from  every  position  they  had  held.  With  all 
his  numerical  superiority  the  attempt  which 
Houchard  was  about  to  make  was  very 
hazardous  :  and  Houchard  was  a  hesitating 
and  uncertain  commander.  Furthermore,  of 
the  forty  thousand  men  one  quarter  at  least 
remained  out  of  action  through  the  ineptitude 
and  political  terror  of  Dumesny,  Houchard's 
lieutenant  upon  the  right. 

It  was  upon  the  6th  of  September  that  the 
French  advance  began  along  the  whole  line; 
it  was  a  mere  pushing  in  of  inferior  numbers 
by  superior  numbers,  the  superior  numbers 
perpetually  proving  themselves  inferior  to 
the  Austrians  in  military  value.  Thus,  the 
capture  of  old  Freytag  himself  in  a  night 
skirmish  was  at  once  avenged  by  the  storm- 
ing of  the  village  near  which  he  had  been 
caught,  and  he  was  re-taken.  In  actual 
fighting  and  force  for  force,  Houchard's  com- 
mand found  nothing  to  encourage  it  during 
these  first  operations. 

The  Austrians  in  falling  back  concentrated 
and  were  soon  one  compact  body  :  to  attack 
and  dislodge  it  was  the  object  of  the  French 
advance,  but  an  object  hardly  to  be  attained. 

G 


194    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

What  happened  was  not  only  the  un- 
expected success  of  this  advance,  but  the 
gaining  by  the  French  of  the  first  decisive 
action  in  the  long  series  which  was  to  ter- 
minate twenty  years  later  at  Leipsic. 

The  army  of  Freytag  fell  back  upon  the 
village  of  Hondschoote  and  stood  there  in 
full  force  upon  the  morning  of  Sunday, 
the  8th  of  September.  Houchard  attacked  it 
with  a  force  greatly  lessened  but  still  double 
that  of  the  defenders.  So  conspicuous,  how- 
ever, was  the  superiority  of  the  Austrian 
regulars  over  the  French  raw  troops  and 
volunteers  that  during  this  morning  of  the 
8th  the  result  was  still  doubtful.  By  the 
afternoon,  however,  the  work  was  done,  and 
the  enemy  were  in  a  retreat  which  might 
easily  have  been  turned  into  a  rout.  A 
glance  at  the  map  will  show  that  Houchard, 
had  he  possessed  the  initiative  common  to 
so  many  of  his  contemporaries,  might  at 
once  have  driven  the  numerically  inferior 
and  heavily  defeated  force  (it  had  lost  one- 
third  of  its  men)  to  the  right,  and  proceeded 
himself  to  cut  the  communications  of  the 
Duke  of  York  and  to  destroy  his  army, 
which  lay  packed  upon  the  waterless  sand 
dunes  where  the  village  of  Malo-les-Bains 
now  stands.  Houchard  hesitated;  Freytag 
escaped ;  the  Duke  of  York,  abandoning  his 
siege-pieces  to  the  number  of  forty  and 
much  of  his  heavy  baggage,  retreated  pre- 
cipitately through  the  night  to  Furnes,  right 
across  the  front  of  the  French  army,  and 
escaped  destruction. 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         195 

The  Battle  of  Hoondschoote,  therefore,  as 
it  is  called,  raised  the  siege  of  Dunquerque. 
It  was,  as  I  have  said,  the  first  successful 
decisive  action  which  the  Revolution  could 
count  since  the  moment  of  its  extreme 
danger  and  the  opening  of  the  general  Euro- 
pean war.  But  it  was  nothing  like  what  it 
might  have  been  had  Houchard  been  willing 
to  risk  a  hardy  stroke.  Houchard  was 
therefore  recalled,  condemned  to  death,  and 
executed  by  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety, 
whose  pitiless  despotism  was  alone  capable 
of  saving  the  nation.  He  remains  the  single 
example  of  a  general  officer  who  has  suffered 
death  for  military  incompetence  after  the 
gaining  of  a  victory,  and  his  execution  is  an 
excellent  example  of  the  way  in  which  the 
military  temper  of  the  Committee,  and  par- 
ticularly of  Carnot,  refused  to  consider  any 
factor  in  the  war  save  those  that  make  for 
military  success. 

Carnot  and  the  Committee  had  no  patience 
with  the  illusions  which  a  civilian  crowd 
possesses  upon  mere  individual  actions  :  what 
they  saw  was  the  campaign  as  a  whole,  and 
they  knew  that  Houchard  had  left  the 
armies  opposite  him  intact. 

Perhaps  his  execution  was  made  more 
certain  by  the  continuance  of  bad  news  from 
that  more  important  point  of  the  frontier — 
the  direct  line  of  Austrian  advance  upon 
Paris.  Here,  already,  Valenciennes  had  fallen 
two  months  before,  and  Conde  also.  Le- 
quesnoy,  the  third  point  of  the  barrier  line, 
capitulated  on  the  11th  of  September,  and 

G  2 


196    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

the  news  of  that  capitulation  reached  Paris 
immediately  after  the  news  of  Hondschoote. 
No  fortress  was  now  left  between  the  Allies 
and  the  capital  but  Maubeuge.  Coburg 
marched  upon  it  at  once. 

Not  only  had  he  that  immense  superiority 
in  the  quality  of  his  troops  which  must  be 
still  insisted  upon,  but  numerically  also 
he  was  three  to  one  when,  on  the  28th  of 
September,  at  dawn,  he  crossed  the  Sambre 
above  and  below  Maubeuge,  and  by  noon 
of  that  day  had  contained  the  French  army 
in  that  neighbourhood  within  the  lines  of 
the  fortress. 

The  situation  was  critical  in  the  extreme  : 
Maubeuge  was  ill  prepared  to  stand  siege; 
it  was  hardly  provisioned ;  its  garrison  was 
of  varied  and,  on  the  whole,  of  bad  quality. 
In  mere  victuals  it  could  stand  out  for  but 
a  few  days,  and,  worst  of  all,  it  had  behind  it 
the  continued  example  of  necessary  and  fatal 
surrenders  which  had  marked  the  whole 
summer.  The  orders  of  the  Committee  of 
Public  Safety  to  its  commander  were  terse  : 
"  Your  head  shall  answer  for  Maubeuge." 
After  the  receipt  of  that  message  no  more 
came  through  the  lines. 

The  reader,  if  he  be  unaccustomed  to 
military  history,  does  well  to  note  that  in 
every  action  and  in  every  campaign  there 
is  some  one  factor  of  position  or  of  arms  or 
of  time  which  explains  the  result.  Each 
has  a  pivot  or  hinge,  as  it  were,  upon  which 
the  whole  turns.  It  was  now  upon  Maubeuge 
that  the  revolutionary  war  thus   depended. 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         197 

At  risk  of  oversimplifying  a  complex  story, 
I  would  lay  this  down  as  the  prime  condition 
for  the  understanding  of  the  early  revolu- 
tionary wars  :  had  Maubeuge  fallen,  the  road 
to  Paris  lay  open  and  the  trick  was  done  ^ — 
and  here  we  must  consider  again  the  effect  in 
the  field  of  Carnot's  genius. 

In  the  first  place,  he  had  provided  numbers 
not  on  paper,  but  in  reality;  the  Commit- 
tee, through  a  decree  of  the  Assembly,  had 
despotically  "  requisitioned  "  men,  animals, 
vehicles  and  supplies.  The  levy  was  a 
reality.  Mere  numbers  then  raw,  but  in- 
creasing, had  begun  to  pour  into  the  north- 
east. It  was  they  that  had  told  at  Hoond- 
schoote,  it  was  they  that  were  to  tell  in 
front  of  Maubeuge. 

^  I  must  not,  ill  fairness  to  tlie  reader,  neglect  tlie  great 
mass  of  opinion,  from  Jomini  to  Mr.  Fortescue's  classic 
work  upon  the  British  Army,  which  lays  it  down  that  the 
Allies  had  but  to  mask  the  frontier  fortresses  and  to 
advance  their  cavalry  rapidly  along  the  Paris  road. 
Historical  hypothesis  can  never  he  more  than  a  matter  of 
judgment,  but  I  confers  that  this  view  has  always  seemed 
to  me  to  ignore — as  purely  military  historians  and  especi- 
ally foreign  ones  might  well  ignore — the  social  condition 
of  ^^*93.*'  Cavalry  is  the  weakest  of  all  arms  with  which 
to  deal  with  sporadic,  unorganised,  but  determined 
resistance.  To  pass  through  the  densely  populated 
country  of  the  Paris  road  may  be  compared  to  the  forcing 
of  an  open  town,  and  cavalry  can  never  be  relied  upon  for 
that.  As  for  the  army  moving  as  a  whole  witnout  a 
perfect  security  in  its  communications,  the  matter  need 
not  even  be  discussed  ;  and  it  must  further  be  remembered 
that,  the  moment  such  an  advance  began,  an  immediate 
concentration  from  the  north  would  have  fallen  upon  the 
ill-guarded  lines  of  supply.  It  may  be  taken  that  Coburg 
knew  his  business  when  he  sat  down  before  this,  the  last 
of  the  fortresses. 


198    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Secondly,  as  the  Committee  supplied  the 
necessary  initiative,  Carnot  supplied  the 
necessary  personality  of  war.  His  own  will 
and  own  brain  could  come  to  one  decision 
in  one  moment,  and  did  so.  It  was  he,  as 
we  shall  see,  who  won  the  critical  action. 
He  chose  Jourdan,  a  man  whose  quaint 
military  career  we  must  reluctantly  leave 
aside  in  so  brief  a  study  as  this,  but  at  any 
rate  an  amateur,  and  put  him  in  Houchard's 
command  over  the  Army  of  the  Northern 
Frontier,  and  that  command  was  extended 
from  right  away  beyond  the  Ardennes  to  the 
sea.  He  ordered  (and  Jourdan  obeyed)  the 
concentration  of  men  from  all  down  that 
lengthy  line  to  the  right  and  the  left  upon 
one  point.  Guise.  To  leave  the  rest  of  the 
frontier  weak  was  a  grave  risk  only  to  be 
excused  by  very  rapid  action  and  success  : 
both  these  were  to  follow.  The  concentra- 
tion was  effected  in  four  days.  Troops 
from  the  extreme  north  could  not  come  in 
time.  The  furthest  called  upon  were  beyond 
Arras,  with  sixty-five  miles  of  route  between 
them  and  Guise.  This  division  (which  shall  be 
typical  of  many),  not  quite  eight  thousand 
strong,  left  on  receiving  orders  in  the  morning 
of  the  3rd  of  October  and  entered  Guise  in 
the  course  of  the  6th.  The  rate  of  marching 
and  the  synchrony  of  these  movements  of 
imperfect  troops  should  especially  be  noted 
by  any  one  who  would  understand  how  the 
Revolution  succeeded. 

A  second  division  of  over  thirteen  thousand 
men  followed  along  the  parallel   road,  with 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT 


19f 


CO 


o 


■cS 

■♦» 

c 
«> 
o 

c: 
o 

V 

"bo 

si 
•a 


200    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

a  similar  time  table.  From  the  other  end  of 
his  line,  a  detachment  under  Beauregard,  just 
over  four  thousand  men,  was  called  up  from 
the  extreme  right.  It  will  serve  as  a  typical 
example  upon  the  eastern  side  of  this  light- 
ning concentration.  It  had  been  gathered 
near  Carignan,  a  town  full  fourteen  miles 
beyond  Sedan.  It  picked  up  reinforcements 
on  the  way  and  marched  into  Fourmies  upon 
the  11th,  after  covering  just  seventy  miles 
in  the  three  and  a  half  days.  With  its 
arrival  the  concentration  was  complete,  and 
not  a  moment  too  soon,  for  the  bombard- 
ment of  Maubeuge  was  about  to  begin. 
From  the  11th  to  the  15th  of  October  the 
army  was  advanced  and  drawn  up  in  line, 
a  day's  march  in  front  of  Guise,  with  its 
centre  at  Avesnes  and  facing  the  covering 
army  of  Coburg,  which  lay  entrenched  upon 
a  long  wooded  crest  with  the  valley  of  the 
Sambre  upon  its  right  and  the  village  of 
Wattignies,  on  a  sort  of  promontory  of  high 
land,  upon  its  left. 

The  Austrian  position  was  reconnoitred 
upon  the  14th.  Upon  the  15th  the  general 
attack  was  delivered  and  badly  repelled. 
When  darkness  fell  upon  that  day  few  in 
the  army  could  have  believed  that  Maubeuge 
was  succourable — and  it  was  a  question  of 
hours. 

Carnot,  however,  sufficiently  knew  the  vir- 
tues as  the  vices  of  his  novel  troops,  the 
troops  of  the  great  levy,  stiffened  with  a 
proportion  of  regulars,  to  attempt  an  extra- 
ordinary thing.     He  marched  eight  thousand 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         201 

from  his  left  and  centre,  over  to  his  right 
during  the  night,  and  in  the  morning  of  the 
16th  his  right,  in  front  of  the  Austrian  left  at 
Wattignies  had,  by  this  conversion,  become 
far  the  strongest  point  of  the  whole  line. 

A  dense  mist  had  covered  the  end  of  this 
operation  as  the  night  had  covered  its  in- 
ception, and  that  mist  endured  until  nearly 
middaj^.  The  Austrians  upon  the  heights 
had  no  hint  of  the  conversion,  and  Wattignies 
was  only  held  by  three  regiments.  If  they 
expected  a  renewed  attack  at  all,  they  can 
only  have  expected  it  in  the  centre,  or  even 
upon  the  left  where  the  French  had  suffered 
most  the  day  before. 

Initiative  in  war  is  essentially  a  calculation 
of  risk,  and  with  high  initiative  the  risk  is 
high.  What  Carnot  gambled  upon  (for  Jour- 
dan  was  against  the  experiment)  when  he 
moved  those  young  men  through  the  night, 
was  the  possibility  of  getting  active  work 
out  of  them  after  a  day's  furious  action, 
the  forced  marches  of  the  preceding  week 
and  on  top  of  it  all  a  sleepless  night  of  further 
marching.  Most  of  the  men  who  were  pre- 
pared to  charge  on  the  French  right  as  the 
day  broadened  and  the  mist  lifted  on  that 
16th  of  October,  had  been  on  foot  for  thirty 
hours.  The  charge  was  delivered,  and  was 
successful.  The  unexpected  numbers  thus 
concentrated  under  Wattignies  carried  that 
extreme  position,  held  the  height,  and  arrived, 
therefore,  on  the  flanlc  of  the  whole  Austrian 
line,  which,  had  not  the  effort  of  the  aggressors 
exhausted  them,  would  have  been  rolled  up 


202    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

in  its  whole  length.  As  it  was,  the  Austrians 
retreated  unmolested  and  in  good  order  across 
the  Sambre.  The  siege  of  Maubeuge  was 
riiised  ;  and  the  next  day  the  victorious 
French  army  entered  the  fortress. 

Thus  was  successfully  passed  the  turning- 
point  of  the  revolutionary  wars. 

Two  months  later  the  other  gate  of  the 
country  was  recovered.  In  the  moment 
when  Maubeuge  was  relieved,  the  enemy  had 
pierced  the  lines  of  Wissembourg.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  an  immediate  and  decisive  under- 
standing among  the  Allies  might  then  have 
swept  ail  Alsace;  but  such  an  understanding 
was  lacking.  The  disarrayed  "  Army  of 
the  Rhine  "  was  got  into  some  sort  of  order, 
notably  through  the  enthusiasm  of  Hoche 
and  the  silent  control  of  Pichegru.  At 
the  end  of  November  the  Prussians  stood 
on  the  defensive  at  Kaiserslautem.  Hoche 
hammered  at  them  for  three  days  without 
success.  What  really  turned  the  scale  was 
the  floods  of  men  and  material  that  the 
levy  and  the  requisitioning  were  pouring  in. 
Just  before  Christmas  the  enemy  evacuated 
Haguenau.  Landau  they  still  held;  but  a 
decisive  action  fought  upon  Boxing  Day, 
a  true  soldiers'  battle,  determined  by  the 
bayonet,  settled  the  fate  of  the  Allies  on  this 
point.  The  French  entered  Wissembourg 
again,  and  Landau  was  relieved  after  a  siege 
of  four  months  and  a  display  of  tenacity 
which  had  done  not  a  little  to  turn  the  tide 
of  the  war. 

Meanwhile  the  news  had  come  in  that  the 


THE   MILITARY   ASPECT         203 

last  of  the  serious  internal  rebellions  was 
crushed.  Toulon  had  been  re-captured,  the 
English  fleet  driven  out ;  the  town,  the  harbour 
and  the  arsenal  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of 
the  French  largely  through  the  science  of  a 
young  major  of  artillery  (not  captain :  I 
have  discussed  the  point  elsewhere),  Bona- 
parte, and  this  had  taken  place  a  week  before 
the  relief  of  Landau.  Tlie  last  confused 
horde  of  La  Vendee  had  been  driven  from  the 
walls  of  Granville  in  Normandy,  to  which  it 
had  erred  and  drifted  rather  than  retreated. 
At  Mans  on  the  13th  of  December  it  was  cut 
to  pieces,  and  at  Savenay  on  the  23rd,  three 
days  before  the  great  victory  in  Alsace,  it 
was  destroyed.  A  long  peasant-and-bandit 
struggle,  desperate  yet  hardly  to  be  called 
guerilla,  continued  through  the  next  year 
behind  the  hedges  of  Lower  Brittany  and  of 
Vendee,  but  the  danger  to  the  State  and  to 
the  Revolution  was  over.  The  year  1793 
ended,  therefore,  with  the  complete  relief  of 
the  whole  territory  of  the  Republic,  save  a 
narrow  strip  upon  the  Belgian  frontier, 
complete  domination  of  it  by  its  Caesar, 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety;  with  two- 
thirds  of  a  million  of  men  under  arms,  and 
the  future  of  the  great  experiment  apparently 
secure. 

The  causes  of  the  wonder  have  been  dis- 
cussed, and  will  be  discussed  indefinitely. 
Primarily,  they  resided  in  the  re-creation  of  a 
strong  central  power;  secondly,  in  the  combin- 
ation of  vast  numbers  and  of  a  reckless  spirit 
of  sacrifice.     The  losses  on  the  National  side 


204    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

were  perpetually  and  heavily  superior  to 
those  of  the  Allies — in  Alsace  they  had  been 
three  to  one ;  and  we  shall  better  understand 
the  duel  when  we  appreciate  that  in  the  short 
eight  years  between  the  opening  of  the  war 
and  the  triumph  of  Napoleon  at  Marengo, 
there  had  fallen  in  killed  and  wounded,  on  the 
French  side,  over  seven  hundred  thousand 
men. 


FIVE 

The  story  of  1794  is  but  the  consequence  of 
what  we  have  just  read.  It  was  the  little 
belt  or  patch  upon  the  Belgian  frontier  which 
was  still  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy  that 
determined  the  nature  of  the  campaign. 

It  was  not  until  spring  that  the  issue  was 
joined.  The  Emperor  of  Austria  reached 
Brussels  on  the  2nd  day  of  April,  and  a  fort- 
night later  reviewed  his  army.  The  French 
line  drawn  up  in  opposition  to  it  suffered 
small  but  continual  reverses  until  the  close 
of  the  month. 

On  the  29th  Clerfayt  suffered  a  defeat 
which  led  to  the  fall,  or  rather  the  escape,  of 
the  small  garrison  of  Menin.  Clerfayt  was 
beaten  again  at  Courtray  a  fortnight  later  ; 
but  all  these  early  engagements  in  the 
campaign  were  of  no  decisive  moment. 
Tourcoing  was  to  be  the  first  heavy  blow 
that  should  begin  to  settle  matters,  Fleurus 
was  to  clinch  them. 

No  battle  can  be  less  satisfactorily  described 


THE  MILITARY  ASPECT         205 

in  a  few  lines  than  that  of  Tourcoing,  so 
different  did  it  appear  to  either  combatant, 
so  opposite  are  the  plans  of  what  was  ex- 
pected on  either  side,  and  of  what  happened, 
so  confused  are  the  various  accounts  of 
contemporaries.  The  accusations  of  treason 
which  nearly  always  arise  after  a  disaster, 
and  especially  a  disaster  overtaking  an  allied 
force,  are  particularly  monstrous,  and  may 
be  dismissed :  in  particular  the  childish  legend 
which  pretends  that  the  Austrians  desired 
an  English  defeat. 

What  the  French  say  is  that  excellent 
forced  marching  and  scientific  concentration 
permitted  them  to  attack  the  enemy  before 
the  junction  of  his  various  forces  was  effected. 
What  the  Allies  say  is  (if  they  are  speaking 
for  their  centre)  that  it  was  shamefully  aban- 
doned and  unsupported  by  the  two  wings; 
if  they  are  speaking  for  the  wings,  that  the 
centre  had  no  business  to  advance,  when  it 
saw  that  the  two  wings  were  not  up  in  time 
to  co-operate. 

One  story  goes  that  the  Archduke  Charles 
was  incapacitated  by  a  fit;  Lord  Acton  has 
lent  his  considerable  authority  to  this  amusing 
version.  At  any  rate,  what  happened  was 
this  : — 

The  Allies  lay  along  the  river  Scheldt  on 
Friday,  the  16th  of  May:  Tournay  was  their 
centre,  with  the  Duke  of  York  in  command 
of  the  chief  force  there;  five  or  six  miles  north, 
down  the  river,  was  one  extremity  of  their  line 
at  a  place  called  Warcoing:  it  was  a  body  of 
Hanoverians.     The  left,  under  the  Archduke 


206    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

Charles,  was  Austrian  and  had  reached  a  place 
a  day's  march  south  of  Tournay  called  St. 
Amand.  Over  against  the  Allies  lay  a  large 
French  force  also  occupying  a  wide  front  of 
over  fifteen  miles,  the  centre  of  which  was 
Tourcoing,  then  a  village.  Its  right  was  in 
front  of  the  fortress  of  Courtrai.  Now, 
behind  the  French,  up  country  northward  in 
the  opposite  direction  from  the  line  of  the 
Allies  on  the  Scheldt  was  another  force  of 
the  Allies  under  Clerfayt.  The  plan  was  that 
the  Allied  right  should  advance  on  to  Mous- 
cron  and  take  it.  The  Allied  centre  should 
advance  on  to  Tourcoing  and  Mouveaux  and 
take  them,  while  the  left  should  march  across 
the  upper  waters  of  the  river  Marque,  forcing 
the  bridges  that  crossed  that  marshy  stream, 
and  come  up  alongside  the  centre.  In  other 
words,  there  was  to  be  an  attack  all  along 
the  French  line  from  the  south,  and  whUe 
it  was  proceeding,  Clerfayt,  from  the  north  of 
the  French,  was  to  cross  the  Lys  and  attack 
also. 

On  the  day  of  the  17th  what  happened  was 
this  :  The  left  of  the  Allies,  marching  from 
St.  Amand,  came  up  half  a  day  late  ;  the  right 
of  the  Allies  took  Mouscron,  but  were  beaten 
out  of  it  by  the  French.  The  centre  of  the 
Allies  fulfilled  their  programme,  reaching 
Tourcoing  and  its  neighbourhood  by  noon 
and  holding  their  positions.  It  is  to  the 
honour  of  English  arms  that  this  success  was 
accomplished  by  a  force  a  third  of  which  was 
British  and  the  most  notable  bayonet  work 
in  which  was  done  by  the  Guards.    Meanwhile, 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT 


207 


Clerfayt  was  late  in  moving  and  in  crossing 
the  river  Lys,  which  lay  between  him  and  his 
objective. 

When  night  fell,  therefore^  on  the  first  day 


■MB   ».'.'.?«    #.•  M,Jnifhf.  IS* 
crca   fretc/t  ...  . 


Courtrs) 


^W9rv,cq 


^^....«>V,.. 


Tourcoing.     May  16  to  18,  1794. 

His  breakdown  of  the  attempt  of  the  Allies  to  cut  off  the  French  near 
Coul"trai  from  Lille  was  due  to  theii*  f;iiluro  to  synchronise.  They  should 
have  boon  in  line  from  A  to  B  at  noon  of  the  17th  with  Clerfayt  at  C. 

of  the  action,  a  glance  at  the  map  will  show 
that  instead  of  one  solid  line  advancing 
against  the  French  from  A  to  B,  and  the 
northern  force  in  touch  with  it  at  C,  the  Allied 
formation  was  an  absurd  projection  in  the 


208     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

middle,  due  to  the  success  of  the  mixed  and 
half -British  force  under  the  Duke  of  York  : 
a  success  which  had  not  been  maintained  on 
the  two  wings.  A  bulge  of  this  sort  in  an 
attacking  line  is  on  the  face  of  it  disastrous. 
The  enemy  have  only  to  be  rapid  in  falling 
upon  either  flank  of  it  and  the  bulge  can  be 
burst  in.  The  French  were  rapid,  and  burst 
in  the  bulge  was.  By  concentrating  their 
forces  against  this  one  central  part  of  the 
Allies  they  fought  three  to  one. 

That  same  capacity  which  at  Wattignies 
had  permitted  them  to  scorn  sleep  and  to  be 
indefatigable  in  marching,  put  them  on  the 
road  before  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  of 
Sunday,  the  18th,  and  with  the  dawn  they 
fell  upon  the  central  force  of  the  Allies, 
attacking  it   from   all   three  sides. 

It  is  on  this  account  that  the  battle  is 
called  the  Battle  of  Tourcoing,  for  Tourcoing 
was  the  most  advanced  point  to  which 
the  centre  of  the  Allies  had  reached.  The 
Germans,  upon  the  Duke  of  York's  right  at 
Tourcoing,  felt  the  first  brunt  of  the  attack. 
The  Duke  of  York  himself,  with  his  mixed, 
half-British  force,  came  in  for  the  blow  imme- 
diately afterwards,  and  while  it  was  still 
early  morning.  The  Germans  at  Tourcoing 
began  to  fall  back.  The  Duke  of  York's 
force,  to  the  left  of  them,  was  left  isolated : 
its  commander  ought  not  to  have  hung  on 
so  long.  But  the  defence  was  maintained 
with  the  utmost  gallantry  for  the  short  time 
during  which  it  was  still  possible.  The  re- 
treat began  about  nine  in  the  morning  and 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT        209 

was  kept  orderly  for  the  first  two  miles,  but 
after  that  point  it  was  a  rout.  The  drivers 
of  the  British  cannon  fled,  and  the  guns,  left 
without  teams,  blocked  the  precipitate  flight 
of  the  cavalry.  Their  disorder  communi- 
cated itself  at  once  to  the  Guards,  and  to 
the  line. 

Even  in  this  desperate  strait  some  sort  of 
order  was  restored,  notably  by  the  Guards 
Brigade,  which  were  apparently  the  first  to 
form,  and  a  movement  that  could  still  be 
called  a  retreat  was  pursued  towards  the 
south.  The  Duke  of  York  himself  was 
chased  from  spinney  to  spinney  and  escaped 
by  a  stroke  of  luck,  finding  a  bridge  across  the 
last  brook  held  by  a  detachment  of  Hessians. 
In  this  way  were  the  central  columns,  who 
between  them  numbered  not  a  third  of  the 
total  force  of  the  Allies,  destroyed. 

Clerfayt  had  first  advanced — but  far  too 
late  to  save  the  centre — and  then  retreated. 
The  Archduke  Charles,  upon  the  left,  w^as 
four  hours  late  in  marching  to  the  help  of  the 
Duke  of  York;  the  right  wing  of  the  Allies 
was  not  even  late  :  it  spent  the  morning  in  an 
orderly  artillery  duel  with  the  French  force 
opposed  to  it.  By  five  in  the  afternoon 
defeat  was  admitted  and  a  general  retreat 
of  the  Allies  ordered. 

I  have  said  that  many  reasons  are  given 
to  account  for  the  disaster  of  Tourcoing,  one 
of  the  very  few  in  which  a  British  force  has 
been  routed  upon  the  Continent ;  but  I 
confess  that  if  I  were  asked  for  an  explana- 
tion of  my  own,  I  would  say  that  it  was 


210    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

simply  due  to  the  gross  lack  of  synchrony 
on  the  part  of  the  Allies,  and  that  this  in  its 
turn  was  taken  advantage  of  by  the  power 
both  of  vigil  and  of  marching  which  the 
French  troops,  still  inferior  in  most  military 
characteristics,  had  developed  and  main- 
tained, and  which  (a  more  important  matter) 
their  commanders  knew  how  to  use. 

This  heavy  blow,  delivered  on  the  18th  of 
May,  in  spite  of  a  successful  rally  a  week 
later,  finally  convinced  the  Emperor  that 
the  march  on  Paris  was  impossible.  Eleven 
days  later,  on  the  29th,  it  was  announced 
in  the  camp  of  Tournay,  upon  which  the 
Allied  army  had  fallen  back,  that  the  Em- 
peror had  determined  to  return  to  Vienna. 
The  Allied  army  was  indeed  still  left  upon 
that  front,  but  the  French  continued  to  pour 
up  against  it.  It  was  again  their  numbers 
that  brought  about  the  next  and  the  final 
victory. 

Far  off,  upon  the  east  of  that  same  line, 
the  army  which  is  famous  in  history  and  in 
song  as  that  of  the  Sambre  et  Meuse  was 
violently  attempting  to  cross  the  Sambre  and 
to  turn  the  line  of  the  Allies.  Coburg  rein- 
forced his  right  opposite  the  French  left, 
but  numbers  had  begun  to  bewilder  him. 
The  enthusiasm  of  Saint- Just,  the  science 
of  Carnot,  decided  victory  at  this  eastern 
end  of  the  line. 

Six  times  the  passage  of  the  Sambre  had 
failed.  Reinforcements  continued  to  reach 
the  army,  and  the  seventh  attempt  succeeded. 

Charleroi,  which  is  the  main  fortress  block- 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT         211 

ing  the  passage  of  the  Sambre  at  this  place, 
could  be,  and  was,  invested  when  once  the 
river  was  crossed  by  the  French.  It  capitu- 
lated in  a  week.  But  the  evacuation  of 
Charleroi  was  but  just  accomplished  when 
Coburg,  seventy  thousand  strong,  appeared 
in  relief  of  the  city. 

The   plateau   above   the   town   where   the 
great    struggle    was    decided,    is    known    as 


"Dunkirk  Oudenarde     ^^  ^  BruSSeT^ 


\ 


-JrJ^eurus  June  2$^ 


Vafe 


enciennes 


Showing  effect  of  Tpres^  Charleroi  and  Fleurus  in  wholly 
throwing  back  the  Allies  in  June  179'!:. 

Tpres  captured  on  June  19  by  the  French,  they  march  on  Oudenarde 
and  pass  it  on  June  25  to  27.  Meanwhile  Charleroi  hus  aLso  sur- 
rendered to  the  French,  and  when,  immediately  afterwards,  the 
Austiians  try  to  relieve  it,  they  are  beaten  at  Fleurus  and  retire  on 
Brussels. 

Thus  the  English  at  Tournai  and  all  the  Allied  Forces  at  Condi^ 
Fal enciennes,  Landrecies,  and  Mons  are  imperilled  and  must  surrender 
or  retire. 

that  of  Fleurus,  and  it  was  upon  the  26th  of 
June  that  the  armies  were  there  engaged. 
Never  before  had  forces  so  equal  permitted 
the  French  any  success.  It  had  hitherto 
been  the  ceaseless  requisitioning  of  men  to 
supply  their  insufficient  training  and  com- 
mand, which  had  accomplished  the  salvation 
of    the    country.     At    Fleurus,   though  there 


212    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

was  still  some  advantage  on  the  French  side, 
the  numbers  were  more  nearly  equal. 

The  action  was  not  determined  for  ten 
hours,  and  on  the  French  centre  and  left 
was  nearly  lost,  when  the  Reserves*  and 
Marceau's  obstinacy  in  front  of  Fleurus 
village  itself  at  last  decided  it. 

The  consequences  of  the  victory  were  final. 
As  the  French  right  advanced  from  Fleurus 
the  French  left  advanced  from  Ypres,  and 
the  centre  became  untenable  for  the  Allies. 
The  four  French  fortresses  which  the  enemy 
still  garrisoned  in  that  Belgian  ''  belt "  of 
which  I  have  spoken,  were  invested  and 
re-captured.  By  the  10th  of  July  the  French 
were  in  Brussels,  the  English  were  beaten 
back  upon  Holland,  the  Austrians  retreating 
upon  the  Rhine,  and  the  continuous  success 
of  the  revolutionary  armies  was  assured. 
•  ••*.. 

While  these  things  were  proceeding  upon 
land,  however,  there  had  appeared  a  factor 
in  the  war  which  modern  desire  for  comfort 
and,  above  all,  for  commercial  security  has 
greatly  exaggerated,  but  which  the  student 
will  do  well  to  note  in  its  due  proportion. 
This  factor  was  the  military  weakness  of 
France  at  sea. 

In  mere  numbers  the  struggle  was  entered 
upon  with  fleets  in  the  ratio  of  about  two 
to  one,  while  to  the  fleet  of  Great  Britain, 
already  twice  as  large  as  its  opponent,  must 
be  added  the  fleets  of  the  Allies.  But  num- 
bers did  not  then,  nor  will  they  in  the  future, 
really  decide  the  issue  of  maritime  war.     It 


THE  MILITARY   ASPECT        213 

was  the  supremacy  of  English  gunnery  which 
turned  the  scale.  This  triumphant  superi- 
ority was  proved  in  the  battle  of  the  1st 
of  June,  1794. 

The  English  fleet  under  Lord  Howe  at- 
tacked the  French  fleet  which  was  waiting 
to  escort  a  convoy  of  grain  into  Brest ; 
the  forces  came  in  contact  upon  the  28th  of 
May,  and  the  action  was  a  running  one  of 
three  days. 

Two  examples  must  suffice  to  prove  how 
determining  was  the  superiority  of  the  British 
fire.  The  Queen  Charlotte,  in  the  final 
action,  found  herself  caught  between  the 
Montague  and  the  Jacobin.  We  have  the 
figures  of  the  losses  during  the  duel  of  these 
two  flagships.  The  Queen  Charlotte  lost  fort}?-- 
two  men  in  the  short  and  furious  exchange, 
the  Montague  alone  three  hundred.  Again, 
consider  the  total  figures.  The  number  of 
the  crews  on  both  sides  was  nearly  equal, 
but  their  losses  were  as  eleven  to  five.  It 
cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the  initial 
advantage  which  the  English  fleet  gained  in 
the  great  war,  which  it  maintained  and 
increased  as  that  war  proceeded,  and  which 
it  made  absolute  at  Trafalgar,  was  an  ad- 
vantage mainly  due  to  the  guns. 

The  reader  must  not  expect  in  a  sketch 
which  ends  with  the  fall  of  Robespierre  any 
treatise,  however  short,  upon  the  effect  of 
sea  power  in  the  revolutionary  wars.  It  has 
of  late  years  been  grossly  exaggerated,  the 
reaction  which  will  follow  this  exaggeration 
may  as  grossly  belittle  it.     It  prevented  the 


214    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

invasion  of  England,  it  permitted  the  exas- 
peration and  wearing  out  of  the  French  forces 
in  the  Peninsula.  But  it  could  not  have 
determined  the  fate  of  Napoleon.  That  was 
determined  by  his  Russian  miscalculation  and 
by  his  subsequent  and  consequent  defeat  at 
Leipsic. 

Upon  the  early  success  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  resulting  establishment  of  European 
democracy,  with  which  alone  these  pages  deal, 
sea  power  was  of  no  considerable  effect. 


VI 

THE  REVOLUTION  AND  THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH 

The  last  and  the  most  important  of  the 
aspects  which  the  French  Revolution  presents 
to  a  foreign,  and  in  particular  to  an  English 
reader,  is  the  antagonism  which  arose  between 
it  and  the  Church. 

As  this  is  the  most  important  so  it  is  the 
most  practical  of  the  historical  problems  which 
the  Revolution  sets  the  student  to  solve ;  for 
the  opposition  of  the  Church's  organisation  in 
France  has  at  once  been  the  most  profound 
which  the  Revolution  has  had  to  encounter, 
the  most  active  in  its  methods,  and  the  only 
one  which  has  increased  in  strength  as  time 
proceeded.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
the  Revolution  would,  in  France  at  least,  have 
achieved  its  object  and  created  a  homogeneous, 
centralised  democracy,  had  not  this  great 
quarrel  between  the  Republic  and  the  Church 


THE  CATHOLIC   CHURCH        215 

arisen ;  and  one  may  legitimately  contrast  the 
ready  pliancy  of  men  to  political  suggestion 
and  the  easy  story  of  their  institutions  where 
men  knew  nothing  of  the  Church,  with  the 
great  storms  that  arise  and  the  fundamental 
quarrels  that  are  challenged  wherever  men 
are  acquainted  with  the  burning  truths  of 
Catholicism. 

Finally,  the  struggle  between  the  Catholic 
Church  and  the  Revolution  is  not  only  the 
most  important  and  the  most  practical,  but 
also  by  an  unhappy  coincidence  the  most 
difficult  of  comprehension  of  all  the  matters 
presented  to  us  by  the  great  change. 

We  have  seen  in  this  book  that  one  depart- 
ment of  revolutionary  history,  the  second  in 
importance,  perhaps,  to  the  religious  depart- 
ment, was  also  difficult  of  comprehension — to 
wit,  the  military  department.  And  we  have 
seen  (or  at  least  I  have  postulated)  that  the 
difficulty  of  following  the  military  fortunes  of 
the  Republic  was  due  to  the  mass  of  detail, 
to  the  technical  character  of  the  information  to 
be  acquired  and  to  the  natural  unfamiliarity 
of  the  general  reader  with  the  elements  of 
military  science.  In  other  words,  an  accurate 
knowledge  of  great  numbers  of  facts,  the 
proper  disposition  of  these  facts  in  their 
order  of  military  importance,  and  the  cor- 
relation of  a  great  number  of  disconnected 
actions  and  plans  will  alone  permit  us  to  grasp 
the  function  of  the  armies  in  the  development 
and  establishment  of  the  modern  State  through 
the  revolutionary  wars. 

Now  in  this  second  and  greater  problem,  the 


216    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

problem  of  the  function  played  by  religion, 
it  is  an  exactly  opposite  method  which  can 
alone  be  of  service. 

We  must  examine  the  field  generally,  and 
still  more  generally  we  must  forget  details 
that  here  only  bewilder,  and  see  in  the  largest 
possible  outline  what  forces  were  really  at 
issue,  why  their  conflict  occurred,  upon  what 
points  that  conflict  was  vital.  Any  more 
particular  plan  will  land  us,  as  it  has  landed 
so  many  thousands  of  controversialists,  in 
mere  invective  on  one  side  or  the  other,  till 
we  come  to  see  nothing  but  a  welter  of  treason 
on  the  part  of  priests,  and  of  massacre  upon 
the  part  of  democrats. 

Men  would,  did  they  try  to  unravel  the  skein 
by  analysing  the  documents  of  the  Vatican  or 
of  the  French  archives,  come  apparently  upon 
nothing  but  a  host  of  petty,  base,  and  often 
personal  calculations ;  or  again,  did  they 
attempt  to  take  a  local  sample  of  the  struggle 
and  to  follow  it  in  one  department  of  thought, 
they  would  come  upon  nothing  but  a  whirl  of 
conflict  with  no  sort  of  clue  to  the  motives 
that  lay  behind. 

The  contrast  betw^een  the  military  and  the 
religious  problem  of  the  French  Revolution 
is  like  the  contrast  between  the  geological 
composition  and  the  topographical  contours 
of  a  countryside.  To  understand  the  first  we 
must  bore  and  dig,  we  must  take  numerous 
samples  of  soil  and  subject  them  to  analysis, 
we  must  make  ourselves  acquainted  with  detail 
in  its  utmost  recesses.  But  for  the  second, 
the  more  general  our  standpoint,  the  wider 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        217 

our  gaze,  and  the  more  comprehensive  our 
judgment,  the  more  accurately  do  we  grasp 
the  knowledge  w^e  have  set  out  to  seek. 

We  must,  then,  approach  our  business  by 
asldng  at  the  outset  the  most  general  question 
of  all :  "  Was  there  a  necessary  and  fundamental 
quarrel  between  the  doctrines  of  the  Revolution 
and  those  of  the  Caiholi<:  Church  ?  " 

Those  ill  acquainted  with  either  party,  and 
therefore  ill  equipped  for  reply,  commonly 
reply  with  assurance  in  the  affirmative.  The 
French  (and  still  more  the  non-French)  Re- 
publican who  may  happen,  by  the  accident  of 
his  life,  to  have  missed  the  Catholic  Church, 
to  have  had  no  intimacy  wth  any  Catholic 
character,  no  reading  of  Catholic  philosophy, 
and  perhaps  even  no  chance  view  of  so  much 
as  an  external  Catholic  ceremony,  replies  un- 
hesitatingly that  the  Church  is  the  necessary 
enemy  of  the  Revolution.  Again,  the  hnigrt^ 
the  wealthy  woman,  the  recluse,  any  one  of 
the  many  contemporary  types  to  whom  the 
democratic  theory  of  the  Revolution  came  as 
a  complete  novelty,  and  to-day  the  wealthy 
families  in  that  tradition,  reply  as  unhesitat- 
ingly that  the  Revolution  is  the  necessary 
enemy  of  the  Church.  The  reply  seems  quite 
sufficient  to  the  Tory  squire  in  England  or 
Germany,  who  may  happen  to  be  a  Catholic 
by  birth  or  by  conversion;  and  it  seems  equally 
obvious  to  (let  us  say)  a  democratic  member 
of  some  Protestant  Church  in  one  of  the  new 
countries. 

Historically  and  logically,  theologically  also, 
those   who    affirm    a  necessary    antagonism 


218     THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

between  the  Republic  and  the  Church  are  in 
error.  Those  who  are  best  fitted  to  approach 
the  problem  by  their  knowledge  both  of  what 
the  Revolution  attempted  and  of  what  Catholic 
philosophy  is,  find  it  in  proportion  to  their 
knowledge  difficult  or  impossible  to  answer 
that  fundamental  question  in  the  affirmative. 
They  cannot  call  the  Revolution  a  necessary 
enemy  of  the  Church,  nor  the  Church  of 
Democracy. 

What  is  more,  minds  at  once  of  the  most 
active  and  of  the  best  instructed  sort  are  the 
very  minds  which  fmd  it  difficult  to  explain 
how  any  such  quarrel  can  have  arisen.  French 
history  itself  is  full  of  the  names  of  those  for 
whom  not  so  much  a  reconciliation  between  the 
Revolution  and  the  Church,  as  a  statement 
that  no  real  quarrel  existed  between  them,  was 
the  motive  of  politics;  and  almost  in  propor- 
tion to  a  man's  knowledge  of  his  fellows  in 
Catholic  societies,  almost  in  that  proportion 
is  the  prime  question  I  have  asked  answered 
by  such  a  man  in  the  negative.  A  man  who 
knows  both  the  Faith  and  the  Republic  will 
tell  you  that  there  is  not  and  cannot  be 
any  necessary  or  fundamental  reason  why  con- 
flict should  have  arisen  between  a  European 
Democracy  and  the  Catholic  Church. 

When  we  examine  those  who  concern  them- 
selves with  the  deepest  and  most  abstract  side 
of  the  quarrel,  we  find  the  same  thing.  It  is 
impossible  for  the  theologian,  or  even  for  the 
practical  ecclesiastical  teacher,  to  put  his 
finger  upon  a  political  doctrine  essential  to 
the  Revolution  and  to  say,   "  This  doctrine 


THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH        219 

is  opposed  to  Catholic  dogma  or  to  Catholic 
morals."  Conversely,  it  is  impossible  for  the 
Republican  to  put  his  finger  upon  a  matter 
of  ecclesiastical  discipline  or  religious  dogma 
and  to  say,  "  This  Catholic  point  is  at  issue 
with  my  political  theory  of  the  State." 

Thousands  of  active  men  upon  either  side 
would  have  been  only  too  willing  during  the 
last  hundred  years  to  discover  some  such  issue, 
and  it  has  proved  undiscoverable.  In  a  word, 
only  those  Democrats  who  know  little  of  the 
Catholic  Church  can  say  that  of  its  nature  it 
forbids  democracy;  and  only  those  Catholics 
who  have  a  confused  or  imperfect  conception 
of  democracy  can  say  that  of  its  nature  it  is 
antagonistic  to  the  Catholic  Church. 

Much  that  is  taught  by  the  purely  temporal 
theory  of  the  one  is  indifferent  to  the  trans- 
cendental and  supernatural  philosophy  of  the 
other.  In  some  points,  where  there  is  contact 
(as  in  the  conception  of  the  dignity  of  man 
and  of  the  equality  of  men)  there  is  agreement. 
To  sum  up,  the  Republican  cannot  by  his 
theory  persecute  the  Church;  the  Church 
cannot  by  her  theory  excommunicate  the 
Republican. 

Why,  then,  it  must  next  be  asked,  has  there 
in  practice  arisen  so  furious  and  so  enormous  a 
conflict,  a  conflict  whose  activity  and  whose 
consequence  are  not  narrowing  but  broadening 
to-day  ? 

It  may  be  replied  to  this  second  question, 
which  is  only  less  general  than  the  first,  in  one 
of  two  manners. 

One  may  say  that  the  actions  of  men  are 


220    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

divided  not  by  theories  but  by  spiritual 
atmospheres,  as  it  were.  According  to  this 
view  men  act  under  impulses  not  ideal  but 
actual  :  impulses  which  affect  great  numbers 
and  yet  in  their  texture  correspond  to  the 
complex  but  united  impulses  of  an  individual 
personality.  Thus,  though  there  be  no  con- 
flict demonstrable  between  the  theology  of 
the  Catholic  Church  and  the  political  theory  of 
the  Revolution,  yet  there  may  be  necessary 
and  fundamental  conflict  between  the  Persons 
we  call  the  Revolution  and  the  Church,  and 
between  the  vivifying  principles  by  which 
either  lives.  That  is  one  answer  that  can  be, 
and  is,  given. 

Or  one  may  give  a  totally  different  answer 
and  say,  "  There  was  no  quarrel  between  the 
theology  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  the  politi- 
cal theory  of  the  Revolution ;  but  the  folly  of 
this  statesman,  the  ill  drafting  of  that  law, 
the  misconception  of  such  and  such  an  institu- 
tion, the  coincidence  of  war  breaking  out  at 
such  and  such  a  moment  and  affecting  men  in 
such  and  such  a  fashion — all  these  material 
accidents  bred  a  misunderstanding  between 
the  two  great  forces,  led  into  conflict  the 
human  officers  and  the  human  organisations 
which  directed  them;  and  conflict  once 
established  feeds  upon,  and  grows  from,  its 
own   substance." 

Now,  if  that  first  form  of  reply  be  given  to 
the  question  we  have  posed,  though  it  is 
sufficient  for  the  type  of  philosophy  which 
uses  it,  though  it  is  certainly  explanatory  of 
all  human  quarrels,  and  though  it  in  parti- 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        221 

cular  satisfies  a  particular  modern  school  of 
thought,  it  is  evident  that  history,  properly 
so  called,  cannot  deal  with  it. 

You  may  say  that  the  Revolution  was  the 
expression  of  a  spirit  far  more  real  than  any 
theory,  that  this  spirit  is  no  more  susceptible 
of  analysis  or  definition  than  is  the  personality 
of  a  single  human  character,  and  that  this 
reality  was  in  conflict  with  another  reality — 
to  wit,  the  Catholic  Church.  You  may  even 
(as  some  minds  by  no  means  negligible  have 
done)  pass  into  the  field  of  mysticism  in  the 
matter,  and  assert  that  really  personal  forces, 
wills  superior  and  external  to  man,  Demons 
and  Angels,  drove  the  Revolution  against  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  created  The  Republic 
to  be  an  anti-Catholic  force  capable  of 
meeting  and  of  defeating  that  Church,  which 
(by  its  own  definition  of  itself)  is  not  a 
theory,  but  the  expression  of  a  Personality 
and  a  Will.  To  put  it  in  old-fashioned  terms, 
you  may  say  that  the  Revolution  was  the  work 
of  antichrist; — but  with  that  kind  of  reply, 
I  repeat,  history  cannot  deal. 

If  it  be  true  that,  in  spite  of  an  absence  of 
contradictory  intellectual  theories,  there  is  a 
fundamental  spiritual  contradiction  between, 
the  Revolution  and  the  Catholic  Church,  then 
time  will  test  the  business;  we  shall  see  in 
that  case  a  perpetual  extension  of  the 
quarrel  until  the  Revolution  becomes  princi- 
pally a  force  for  the  extinction  of  Catho- 
licism, and  the  Catholic  Church  appears 
to  the  supporter  of  the  Revolution  not 
as  his  principal,  but  as  his  only  enemy.     Such 


222    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

a  development  has  not  arisen  in  a  hundred 
years ;  a  process  of  time  far  more  lengthy  will 
alone  permit  us  to  judge  whether  the  supposed 
duello  is  a  real  matter  or  a  phantasm. 

The  second  type  of  answer,  the  answer 
which  pretends  to  explain  the  antagonism  by 
a  definite  series  of  events,  does  concern  the 
historian. 

Proceeding  upon  the  lines  of  that  second 
answer,  he  can  bring  his  science  to  bear  and 
use  the  instruments  of  his  trade;  and  he  can 
show  (as  I  propose  to  show  in  what  follows) 
how,  although  no  quarrel  can  be  found  be- 
tween the  theory  of  the  Revolution  and  that 
of  the  Church,  an  active  quarrel  did  in  fact 
spring  up  between  the  Revolution  in  action 
and  the  authorities  of  Catholicism;  a  quarrel 
which  a  hundred  years  has  not  appeased,  but 
accentuated. 

Behind  the  revolutionary  quarrel  lay  the 
condition  of  the  Church  in  the  French  State 
since  the  settlement  of  the  quarrel  of  the 
Reformation. 

With  what  that  quarrel  of  the  Reformation 
was,  the  reader  is  sufficiently  familiar.  For, 
roughly  speaking,  a  hundred  years,  from  the 
first  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  first 
years  of  the  seventeenth  (from  the  youth  of 
Henry  VIII  to  the  boyhood  of  Charles  I  in 
England),  a  great  attempt  was  made  to  change 
(as  one  party  would  have  said  to  amend,  as 
the  other  would  have  said  to  denaturalise) 
the  whole  body  of  Western  Christendom.  A 
general  movement  of  attack  upon  the  inherited 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        223 

form  of  the  Church,  and  a  general  resistance  to 
that  attack,  was  at  work  throughout  European 
civilisation ;  and  either  antagonist  hoped  for  a 
universal  success,  the  one  of  what  he  called 
"  The  Reformation  of  religion,"  the  other  of 
what  he  called  "  The  Divine  Institution  and 
visible  unity  of  the  Catholic  Church." 

At  the  end  of  such  a  period  it  became 
apparent  that  no  such  general  result  had  been, 
or  could  be,  attained.  All  that  part  of  the 
West  which  had  rejected  the  authority  of  the 
See  of  Rome  began  to  appear  as  a  separate 
territorial  region  permanently  divided  from 
the  rest ;  all  that  part  of  Europe  which  had 
retained  the  Authority  of  the  See  of  Rome 
began  to  appear  as  another  region  of  territory. 
The  line  of  cleavage  between  the  two  was  be- 
ginning to  define  itself  as  a  geographical  line, 
and  nearly  corresponded  to  the  line  which, 
centuries  before,  had  divided  the  Roman  and 
civilised  world  from  the  Barbarians. 

The  Province  of  Britain  had  an  excep- 
tional fate.  Though  Roman  in  origin  and 
of  the  ancient  civilisation  in  its  foundation, 
it  fell  upon  the  non-Roman  side  of  the  new 
boundary;  while  Ireland,  which  the  Roman 
Empire  had  never  organised  or  instructed,  re- 
mained, alone  of  the  external  parts  of  Europe, 
in  communion  with  Rome.  Italy,  Spain, 
and  in  the  main  southern  or  Romanised 
Germany,  refused  ultimately  to  abandon  their 
tradition  of  civilisation  and  of  religion.  But 
in  Gaul  it  was  otherwise — and  the  action  of 
Gaul  during  the  Reformation  must  be  seized  if 
its  modern  religious  quarrels  are  to  be  appre- 


224    THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

hended.  A  very  considerable  proportion  of 
the  French  landed  and  mercantile  classes,  that 
is  of  the  wealthy  men  of  the  country,  were  in 
sympathy  with  the  new  religious  doctrines  and 
the  new  social  organisation  w^hich  had  now 
taken  root  in  England,  Scotland,  Holland, 
northern  Germany  and  Scandinavia,  and 
which  were  destined  in  those  countries  to 
lead  to  the  domination  of  wealth.  These 
French  squires  and  traders  were  called  the 
Huguenots. 

The  succeeding  hundred  years,  from  1615 
to  1715,  let  us  say,  were  a  settlement,  not 
without  bloodshed,  of  the  unsatisfied  quarrel 
of  the  preceding  century.  All  Englishmen 
know  what  happened  in  England;  how  the 
last  vestiges  of  Catholicism  were  crushed  out 
and  all  the  social  and  political  consequences  of 
Protestantism  established  in  the  State, 

There  was,  even  in  that  same  seventeenth 
century,  a  separate,  but  futile,  attempt  to 
destroy  Catholicism  in  Ireland.  In  Germany 
a  struggle  of  the  utmost  violence  had  only  led 
to  a  similar  regional  result.  The  first  third 
of  that  hundred  years  concluded  in  the  Peace 
of  Westphalia,  and  left  the  Protestant  and 
Catholic  territorial  divisions  much  what  we 
novf  know  them. 

In  France,  however,  the  peculiar  phenome- 
non remained  of  a  body  powerful  in  numbers 
and  (what  was  far  more  important)  in  wealth 
and  social  power,  scattered  throughout  the 
territory  of  the  kingdom,  organised  and,  by 
this  time,  fixedly  anti-Catholic,  and  therefore 
anti-national. 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        225 

The  nation  had  recovered  its  traditional 
line  and  had  insisted  upon  the  victory  of  a 
strong  executive,  and  that  executive  Catholic. 
France,  therefore,  in  this  period  of  settlement, 
became  an  absolute  monarchy  whose  chief 
possessed  tremendous  and  immediate  powers, 
and  a  monarchy  which  incorporated  with  itself 
all  the  great  elements  of  the  national  tradition, 
including  the  Church, 

It  is  the  name  of  Louis  XIV,  of  course, 
which  symbolises  this  great  time ;  his  very 
long  reign  precisely  corresponds  to  it.  He 
was  born  coincidently  with  that  universal 
struggle  for  a  religious  settlement  in  Europe, 
which  I  have  described  as  characteristic  of 
the  time;  he  died  precisely  at  its  close; 
and  under  him  it  seemed  as  though  the  recon- 
structed power  of  Gaul  and  the  defence  of 
organised  Catholicism  were  to  be  synonymous. 

But  there  were  two  elements  of  disruption 
in  that  homogeneous  body  which  Louis  XIV 
apparently  commanded.  The  very  fact  that 
the  Church  had  thus  become  in  France  an 
unshakable  national  institution,  chilled  the 
vital  source  of  Catholicism.  Not  only  did  the 
hierarchy  stand  in  a  perpetual  suspicion  of 
the  Roman  See,  and  toy  with  the  conception 
of  national  independence,  but  they,  and  all 
the  official  organisation  of  French  Catholicism, 
put  the  security  of  the  national  establishment 
and  its  intimate  attachment  to  the  general 
political  structure  of  the  State,  far  beyond  the 
sanctity  of  Catholic  dogma  or  the  practice  of 
Catholic  morals. 

That  political  structiu:e — the  French  mon- 


226     THE   FRENCH  KEVOLUTION 

archy — seemed  to  be  of  granite  and  eternal. 
Had  it  indeed  survived,  the  Church  in  Gaul 
would  doubtless,  in  spite  of  its  attachment 
to  so  mundane  a  thing  as  the  crown,  have  still 
survived  to  enjoy  one  of  those  resurrections 
which  have  never  failed  it  in  the  past,  and 
would  have  returned,  by  some  creative 
reaction,  to  its  principle  of  life.  But  for  the 
moment  the  consequence  of  this  fixed  political 
establishment  was  that  scepticism,  and  all 
those  other  active  forces  of  the  mind  which 
play  upon  religion  in  any  Catholic  State,  had 
full  opportunity.  The  Church  was,  so  to 
speak,  not  concerned  to  defend  itself  but  only 
its  method  of  existence.  It  was  as  though  a 
garrison,  forgetting  the  main  defences  of  a 
place,  had  concentrated  all  its  efforts  upon 
the  security  of  one  work  which  contained  its 
supplies  of  food. 

Wit,  good  verse,  sincere  enthusiasm,  a 
lucid  exposition  of  whatever  in  the  himian 
mind  perpetually  rebels  against  transcendental 
affirmations,  were  allowed  every  latitude  and 
provoked  no  effective  reply.  But  overt  acts 
of  disrespect  to  ecclesiastical  authority  were 
punished  with  rigour. 

While  in  the  wealthy,  the  bureaucratic,  and 
the  governing  classes,  to  ridicxile  the  Faith 
was  an  attitude  taken  for  granted,  seriously 
to  attack  the  privileges  or  position  of  its 
ministers  was  ungentlemanly,  and  was  not 
allowed.  It  did  not  shock  the  hierarchy  that 
one  of  its  Apostolic  members  should  be  a 
witty  atheist;  that  another  should  go  hunting 
upon  Corpus  Christi,  nearly  upset  the  Blessed 


I 


THE  CATHOLIC   CHURCH        227 

Sacrament  in  his  gallop,  and  forget  what  day  it 
was  when  the  accident  occurred.  The  bishops 
found  nothing  remarkable  in  seeing  a  large 
proportion  of  their  body  to  be  loose  livers, 
or  in  some  of  them  openly  presenting  their 
friends  to  their  mistresses  as  might  be  done 
by  any  gi'eat  lay  noble  round  them.  That  a 
diocese  or  any  other  spiritual  charge  should 
be  divorced  from  its  titular  chief,  seemed  to 
them  as  natural  as  does  to  us  the  absence  from 
his  modern  regiment  of  some  titular  foreign 
colonel.  Unquestioned  also  by  the  bishops 
were  the  poverty,  the  neglect,  and  the  unin- 
struction  of  the  parish  clergy;  nay — and  this 
is  by  far  the  principal  feature — the  abandon- 
ment of  religion  by  all  but  a  very  few  of  the 
French  millions,  no  more  affected  the  eccle- 
siastical officials  of  the  time  than  does  the 
starvation  of  our  pK)or  affect,  let  us  say,  one 
of  our  professional  politicians.  It  was  a  thing 
simply  taken  for  granted. 

Tile  reader  must  seize  that  moribund 
condition  of  the  religious  life  of  France  upon 
the  eve  of  the  Revolution,  for  it  is  at  once 
imperfectly  grasped  by  the  general  run  of 
historians,  and  is  also  the  only  fact  which  tho- 
roughly explains  what  followed.  The  swoon 
of  the  Faith  in  the  eighteenth  century  is  the 
negative  foundation  upon  which  the  strange 
religious  experience  of  the  French  was  about 
to  rise.  France,  in  the  generation  before  the 
Revolution,  was  passing  through  a  phase  in 
which  the  Catholic  Faith  was  at  a  lower  ebb 
than  it  had  ever  been  since  the  preaching  and 
establishment  of  it  in  Gaul. 

H  2 


228    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

This  truth  is  veiled  by  more  than  one  cir- 
cumstance. Thus  many  official  acts,  notably 
marriages  and  the  registration  of  births,  took 
place  under  a  Catholic  form,  and  indeed 
Catholic  forms  had  a  monopoly  of  them. 
Again,  the  State  wore  Catholic  clothes,  as  it 
were  :  the  public  occasions  of  pomp  were  full 
of  religious  ceremony.  Few  of  the  middle 
classes  went  to  Mass  in  the  great  towns, 
hardly  any  of  the  artisans ;  but  the  Churches 
were  "  official."  Great  sums  of  money — 
including  official  money — were  at  the  disposal 
of  the  Church ;  and  the  great  ecclesiastics 
were  men  from  whom  solid  favours  could  be 
got.  Again,  the  historic  truth  is  masked  by 
the  language  and  point  of  view  of  the  great 
Catholic  reaction  which  has  taken  place  in 
our  own  time. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  where  one  adult  of  the 
educated  classes  concerned  himself  seriously 
with  the  Catholic  Faith  and  Practice  in  France 
before  the  Revolution,  there  are  five  to-day. 
But  in  between  lies  the  violent  episode  of  the 
persecution,  and  the  Catholic  reaction  in  our 
time  perpetually  tends  to  contrast  a  supposed 
pre-revolutionary  "  Catholic  "  society  with 
the  revolutionary  fury.  "  Look,"  say  its 
champions,  "  at  the  dreadful  way  in  which 
the  Revolution  treated  the  Church."  And 
as  they  say  this  the  converse  truth 
appears  obvious  and  they  seem  to  imply, 
"  Think  how  different  it  must  have  been  be- 
fore the  Revolution  persecuted  the  Church  !  " 
The  very  violence  of  the  modern  reaction 
towards  Catholicism  has  exaggerated  the  re- 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        229 

volutionary  persecution,  and  in  doing  so  has 
made  men  forget  that  apart  from  other 
evidence  of  the  decHne  of  rehgion,  it  is  obvious 
that  persecution  could  never  have  arisen 
without  a  strong  and  continuous  historical 
backing.  You  could  not  have  had  a  Diocle- 
tian in  the  thirteenth  century  with  the  spirit 
of  the  Crusaders  just  preceding  him;  you  could 
not  have  had  Henry  VIII  if  the  England  of 
the  fifteenth  century  just  preceding  him  had 
been  an  England  devoted  to  the  monastic 
profession.  And  you  could  not  have  had  the 
revolutionary  fury  against  the  Catholic  Church 
in  France  if  the  preceding  generation  had 
been  actively  Catholic  even  in  a  considerable 
portion. 

As  a  fact,  of  course  it  was  not  :  and  in  the 
popular  indifference  to  or  hatred  of  the  Church 
the  principal  factor  was  the  strict  brotherhood 
not  so  much  of  Church  and  State  as  of  Church 
and  executive  Government. 

But  there  was  another  factor.  We  were 
describing  a  little  way  back  how  in  France 
there  had  arisen,  during  the  movement  of  the 
Reformation,  a  wealthy,  powerful  and  numeri- 
cally large  Huguenot  body.  In  mere  numbers 
it  dwindled,  but  it  maintained  throughout 
the  seventeenth  century  a  very  high  position, 
both  of  privilege  and  (what  was  its  charac- 
teristic) of  money-power;  and  even  to-day, 
though  their  birth-rate  is,  of  course,  lower 
than  the  average  of  the  nation,  the  French 
Huguenots  number  close  upon  a  million,  and 
are  far  wealthier,  upon  the  average,  than 
their  fellow  citizens.     It  is  their  wealth  which 


230    THE  FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

dominates  the  trade  of  certain  districts,  which 
exercises  so  great  an  effect  upon  the  univer- 
sities, the  publishing  trade,  and  the  press; 
and  in  general  lends  them  such  weight  in  the 
affairs  of  the  nation. 

Now  the  Huguenot  had  in  France  a  special 
and  permanent  quarrel  with  the  monarchy, 
and  therefore  with  the  Catholic  Church, 
which,  precisely  because  it  was  not  of  the  vivid 
and  intense  kind  which  is  associated  with 
popular  and  universal  religions,  was  the  more 
secretly  ubiquitous.  His  quarrel  was  that, 
having  been  highly  privileged  for  nearly  a 
century,  the  member  of  "  a  State  within  a 
State,"  and  for  more  than  a  generation  free 
to  hold  assemblies  separate  from  and  often 
antagonistic  to  the  national  Government, 
these  privileges  had  been  suddenly  removed 
from  him  by  the  Government  of  Louis  XIV 
a  century  before  the  Revolution.  The  quarrel 
was  more  political  than  religious;  it  was  a  sort 
of  ''  Home  Rule  "  quarrel.  For  though  the 
Huguenots  were  spread  throughout  France, 
they  had  possessed  special  cities  and  territories 
wherein  their  spirit  and,  to  a  certain  extent, 
their  private  self-government,  formed  enclaves 
of  particularism  within  the  State. 

They  had  held  this  position,  as  I  have  said, 
for  close  upon  a  hundred  years,  and  it  was  not 
until  a  date  contemporary  with  the  violent 
settlement  of  the  religious  trouble  in  England 
by  the  expulsion  of  James  II  that  a  similar 
settlement,  less  violent,  achieved  (as  it  was 
thought)  a  similar  religious  unity  in  France. 
But    that    unity    was    not    achieved.     The 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        23E 

Huguenots,  though  no  longer  permitted  t® 
exist  as  a  State  within  a  State,  remained,  for 
the  hundred  years  between  the  Revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  and  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution,  a  powerful  and  ever-watch- 
ful body.  They  stood  upon  the  flank  of 
the  attack  which  intellectual  scepticism  was 
making  upon  the  Catholic  Church,  they  were 
prepared  to  take  advantage  of  that  scepticism's 
first  political  victory,  and  since  the  Revolution 
they  have  been  the  most  powerful  and,  after 
the  Freemasons,  with  whom  they  are  largely 
identified,  the  most  strongly  organised,  of  the 
anti-clerical  forces  in  the  country. 

The  Jews,  whose  action  since  the  Revolution 
has  been  so  remarkable  in  this  same  business, 
were  not,  in  the  period  immediately  preceding 
it,  of  any  considerable  influence,  and  their 
element  in  the  coalition  may  be  neglected. 

Such,  then,  was  the  position  when  the 
Revolution  was  preparing.  Within  memory 
of  all  men  living,  the  Church  had  become  more 
and  more  official,  the  masses  of  the  great  towns 
had  wholly  lost  touch  with  it;  the  intelligence 
of  the  country  was  in  the  main  drawn  to  the 
Deist  or  even  to  the  purely  sceptical  propa- 
ganda, the  powerful  Huguenot  body  was  ready 
f)repared  for  an  alliance  with  any  foe  of  Catho- 
icism,  and  in  the  eyes  of  the  impoverished 
town  populace — notably  in  Paris,  which  had 
long  abandoned  the  practice  of  religion — the 
human  organisation  of  the  Church,  the 
hierarchy,  the  priesthood,  and  the  few  but 
very  wealthy  religious  orders  which  still 
lingered  on  in  dwindling  numbers,  were  but 


232    THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

a  portion  of  the  privileged  world  which  the 
populace  hated  and  was  prepared  to  destroy. 

It  is  upon  such  a  spirit  and  in  such  condi- 
tions of  the  national  religious  life  that  the 
Revolution  begins  to  work.  In  the  National 
Assembly  you  have  the  great  body  of  the 
Commons  which  determines  the  whole, 
touched  only  here  and  there  with  men  in  any 
way  acquainted  with  or  devoted  to  Catholic 
practice,  and  those  men  for  the  most  part 
individual  and  eccentric,  that  is,  uncatholic, 
almost  in  proportion  to  the  genuineness  of 
their  religious  feeling.  Among  the  nobility 
the  practice  of  religion  was  a  social  habit  with 
some — as  a  mental  attitude  the  Faith  was 
forgotten  among  all  but  a  very  few.  Among 
the  clergy  a  very  wealthy  hierarchy,  no  one 
of  them  prepared  to  defend  the  Church  with 
philosophical  argument,  and  almost  unanim- 
ous in  regarding  itself  as  a  part  of  the  old 
political  machine,  was  dominant ;  while  the 
representatives  of  the  lower  clergy,  strongly 
democratic  in  character,  were  at  first  more 
occupied  with  the  establishment  of  democracy 
than  with  the  impending  attack  upon  the 
material  and  temporal  organisation  of  the 
Church. 

Now,  that  material  and  temporal  organisa- 
tion offered  at  the  very  beginning  of  the 
debates  an  opportunity  for  attack  which  no 
other  department  of  the  old  regime  could 
show. 

The  immediate  peril  of  the  State  was 
financial.  The  pretext  and  even  to  some  ex- 
tent the  motive  for  the  calling  of  the  States- 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        233 

General  was  the  necessity  for  finding  money. 
The  old  fiscal  machinery  had  broken  down, 
and  as  always  happens  when  a  fiscal  machine 
breaks  down,  the  hardship  it  involved,  and 
the  pressure  upon  individuals  which  it  in- 
volved, appeared  to  be  universal.  There 
was  no  iminediate  and  easily  available  fund 
of  wealth  upon  which  the  Executive  could  lay 
hands  save  the  wealth  of  the  clergy. 

The  feudal  dues  of  the  nobles,  if  abandoned, 
must  fall  rather  to  the  peasantry  than  to  the 
State.  Of  the  existing  taxes  few  could  be 
increased  without  peril,  and  none  with  any 
prospect  of  a  large  additional  revenue.  The 
charge  for  debt  alone  was  one-half  of  the  total 
receipts  of  the  State,  the  deficit  was,  in 
proportion  to  the  revenue,  overwhelming. 
Face  to  face  with  that  you  had  an  institution 
not  popular,  one  whose  public  functions  were 
followed  by  but  a  small  proportion  of  the 
population,  one  in  which  income  was  most 
unequally  distributed,  and  one  whose  feudal 
property  yielded  in  dues  an  amount  equal  to 
more  than  a  quarter  of  the  total  revenue  of 
the  State.  Add  to  this  a  system  of  tithes 
which  produced  nearly  as  much  again,  and 
it  will  be  apparent  under  what  a  financial 
temptation  the  Assembly  lay. 

It  may  be  argued,  of  course,  that  the  right 
of  the  Church  to  this  ecclesiastical  property, 
whether  in  land  or  in  tithes,  was  absolute, 
and  that  the  confiscation  of  the  one  or  of 
the  other  form  of  revenue  was  mere  theft. 
But  such  was  not  the  legal  conception  of  the 
moment.     The  wrath  of  the  Church  was  not 


234    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

even  (and  this  is  most  remarkable)  defended 
as  absolute  property  by  the  generality  of  those 
who  enjoyed  it.  The  tone  of  the  debates 
which  suppressed  the  tithes,  and  later  con- 
fiscated the  Church  lands,  was  a  tone  of  dis- 
cussion upon  legal  points,  precedents,  public 
utility,  and  so  forth.  There  was  not  heard  in 
it,  in  any  effective  degree,  the  assertion  of 
mere  moral  right;  though  in  that  time  the 
moral  rights  of  property  were  among  the  first 
©f  political  doctrines. 

It  was  not,  however,  the  confiscation  of 
the  Church  lands  and  the  suppression  of  the 
tithe  which  founded  the  quarrel  between 
the  Revolution  and  the  clergy.  No  financial 
or  economic  change  is  ever  more  than  a  pre- 
paration for,  or  a  permissive  condition  of, 
a  moral  change.  It  is  never  the  cause  of  a 
moral  change.  Even  the  suppression  of  the 
religious  houses  in  the  beginning  of  1790 
must  not  be  taken  as  the  point  of  departure 
in  the  great  quarrel.  The  religious  orders  in 
France  were  at  that  moment  too  decayed  in 
zeal  and  in  numbers,  too  wealthy  and  much 
too  removed  from  the  life  of  the  nation,  for 
this  to  be  the  case.  The  true  historical  point 
of  departure  from  which  we  must  date  the 
beginning  of  this  profound  debate  between 
the  Revolution  and  Catholicism,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  morning  of  the  30th  of  May, 
1790,  when  a  parliamentary  committee  (the 
Ecclesiastical  Committee)  presented  to  the 
House  its  plan  for  the  reform  of  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  Church  in  Gaul. 

The  enormity  of  that  act  is  now  apparent 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        235 

to  the  whole  world.  The  proposal,  at  the 
bidding  of  chance  representatives  not  elected 
ad  hoc,  to  change  the  dioceses  and  the  sees  of 
Catholic  France,  the  decision  of  an  ephemeral 
political  body  to  limit  to  such  and  such 
ties  (and  very  feeble  they  were)  the  bond 
between  the  Church  of  France  and  the  Holy 
See,  the  suppression  of  the  Cathedral  Chapters, 
the  seemingly  farcical  proposal  that  bishops 
should  be  elected,  nay,  priests  also  thus  chosen, 
the  submission  ojf  the  hierarchy  in  the  matter 
of  residence  and  travel  to  a  civil  authority 
which  openly  declared  itself  indifferent  in 
matters  of  religion, — all  this  bewilders  the 
modern  mind.  How,  we  ask,  could  men  so 
learned,  so  enthusiastic,  so  laborious  and  so 
closely  in  touch  with  all  the  realities  of  their 
time,  make  a  blunder  of  that  magnitude  ? 
Much  more,  how  did  such  a  blunder  escape 
the  damnation  of  universal  mockery  and  im- 
mediate impotence  ?  The  answer  is  to  be  dis- 
covered in  what  has  just  been  laid  down  with 
so  much  insistence  :  the  temporary  eclipse 
of  religion  in  France  before  the  Revolution 
broke  out. 

The  men  who  framed  the  Constitution  of 
the  Clergy,  the  men  who  voted  it,  nay,  even 
the  men  who  argued  against  it,  all  had  at  the 
back  of  their  minds  three  conceptions  which 
they  were  attempting  to  reconcile  :  of  those 
three  conceptions  one  was  wholly  wrong,  one 
was  imperfect  because  superficial,  the  third 
alone  was  true.  And  these  three  conceptions 
were,  first,  that  the  Catholic  Church  was  a  mori- 
bund superstition,  secondly,  that  it  possessed 


k 


236    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

in  its  organisation  and  tradition  a  power  to 
be  reckoned  with,  and  thirdly,  that  the  State, 
its  organs,  and  their  corporate  inheritance  of 
action,  were  so  bound  up  with  the  CathoHc 
Church  that  it  was  impossible  to  effect  any 
general  political  settlement  in  which  that 
body  both  external  to  France  and  internal, 
should  be  neglected. 

Of  these  three  conceptions,  had  the  first 
been  as  true  as  the  last,  it  would  have  saved 
the  Constitution  of  the  Clergy  and  the  reputa- 
tion for  common-sense  of  those  who  framed  it. 

It  was  certainly  true  that  Catholicism  had 
for  so  many  centuries  been  bound  up  in  the 
framework  of  the  State  that  the  Parliament 
must  therefore  do  something  with  the  Church 
in  the  general  settlement  of  the  nation  :  it 
could  not  merely  leave  the  Church  on  one  side. 

It  was  also  superficially  true  that  the  Church 
was  a  power  to  be  reckoned  with  politically, 
quite  apart  from  the  traditional  union  of 
Church  and  State — ^but  only  superficially  true. 
What  the  revolutionary  politicians  feared 
was  the  intrigue  of  those  who  commanded 
the  organisation  of  the  Catholic  Church,  men 
whom  they  knew  for  the  most  part  to  be 
without  religion,  and  the  sincerity  of  all  of 
whom  they  naturally  doubted,  A  less  super- 
ficial and  a  more  solid  judgment  of  the  matter 
would  have  discovered  that  the  real  danger 
lay  in  the  animosity  or  intrigue  against 
the  Civil  Constitution,  not  of  the  corrupt 
hierarchy,  but  of  the  sincere  though  ill- 
instructed  and  dwindling  minority  which 
was   still   loyally   attached   to   the  doctrines 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        237 

and  discipline  of  the  Church.  But  even  this 
superficial  judgment  would  not  have  been 
fatal,  had  not  the  judgment  of  the  National 
Assembly  been  actually  erroneous  upon  the 
first  point — the  vitality  of  the  Faith. 

Had  the  Catholic  Church  been,  as  nearly 
all  educated  men  then  imagined,  a  moribund 
superstition,  had  the  phase  of  decline  through 
which  it  was  passing  been  a  phase  comparable 
to  that  through  which  other  religions  have 
passed  in  their  last  moments,  had  it  been 
supported  by  ancient  families  from  mere 
tradition,  clung  to  by  remote  peasants  from 
mere  ignorance  and  isolation,  abandoned 
(as  it  was)  in  the  towns  simply  because  the 
townip  had  better  opportunities  of  intellectual 
enlightenment  and  of  acquiring  elementary 
knowledge  in  history  and  the  sciences;  had, 
in  a  word,  the  imaginary  picture  which  these 
men  drew  in  their  minds  of  the  Catholic 
Church  and  its  fortunes  been  an  exact  one, 
then  the  Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy  would 
have  been  a  statesmanlike  act.  It  would 
have  permitted  the  hold  of  the  Catholic 
Church  upon  such  districts  as  it  still  retained 
to  vanish  slowly  and  without  shock.  It 
proposed  to  keep  alive  at  a  reasonable  salary 
the  ministers  of  a  ritual  which  w^ould  pre- 
sumably have  lost  all  vitality  before  the  last 
of  its  pensioners  was  dead  ;  it  would  have 
prepared  a  bed,  as  it  were,  upon  which  the 
last  of  Catholicism  in  Gaul  could  peacefully 
pass  away.  The  action  of  the  politicians  in 
framing  the  Constitution  would  have  seemed 
more   generous    with  every  passing  decade 


288    THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

and  their  wisdom  in  avoiding  offence  to  the 
few  who  still  remained  faithful,  would  have 
been  increasingly  applauded. 

On  the  other  hand,  and  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  statesman,  the  Civil  Constitution 
of  the  Clergy  bound  strictly  to  the  State  and 
made  responsible  to  it  those  ancient  functions, 
not  yet  dead,  of  the  episcopacy  and  all  its 
train.  It  was  a  wise  and  a  just  consideration 
on  the  part  of  the  Assembly  that  religions 
retain  their  machinery  long  after  they  are 
dead,  and  if  that  machinery  has  ever  been 
a  State  machinery  it  must  remain  subject  to 
the  control  of  the  State  :  and  subject  not 
only  up  to  the  moment  when  the  living  force 
which  once  animated  it  is  fled,  but  much 
longer;  up,  indeed,  to  the  moment  when  the 
surviving  institutions  of  the  dead  religion 
break   down   and  perish. 

So  argued  the  National  Assembly  and  its 
committee,  and,  I  repeat,  the  argument  was 
just  and  statesmanlike,  prudent  and  full  of 
foresight,  save  for  one  miscalculation.  The 
Catholic  Church  was  not  dead,  and  was  not 
even  dying.  It  was  exhibiting  many  of  the 
symptoms  which  in  other  organisms  and 
institutions  correspond  to  the  approach  of 
death,  but  the  Catholic  Church  is  an  organism 
and  an  institution  quite  unlike  any  other. 
It  fructifies  and  expands  immediately  under 
the  touch  of  a  lethal  weapon;  it  has  at  its 
very  roots  the  conception  that  material  pros- 
perity is  stifling  to  it,  poverty  and  misfortune 
nutritious. 

The  men  of  the  National  Assembly  would 


THE   CATHOLIC  CHURCH        239 

have  acted  more  wisely  had  they  closely 
studied  the  story  of  Ireland  (then  but  little 
known),  or  had  they  even  made  themselves 
acquainted  with  the  methods  by  which  the 
Catholic  Church  in  Britain,  after  passing  in 
the  fifteenth  century  through  a  phase  some- 
what similar  to  that  under  which  it  was 
sinking  in  Gaul  in  the  eighteenth,  was  stifled 
under  Henry  and  Elizabeth. 

But  the  desire  of  the  men  of  1789  was  not 
to  kill  the  Church  but  to  let  it  die ;  they  thought 
it  dying.  Their  desire  was  only  to  make  that 
death  decent  and  of  no  hurt  to  the  nation,  and 
to  control  the  political  action  of  a  hierarchy 
that  had  been  wealthy  and  was  bound  up 
w^ith  the  old  society  that  was  crumbling  upon 
every  side. 

The  Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy  failed : 
it  lit  the  civil  war,  it  dug  the  pit  which 
divided  Catholicism  from  the  Revolution 
at  the  moment  of  the  foreign  invasion,  it 
segregated  the  loyal  priest  in  such  a  fashion 
that  his  order  could  not  but  appear  to  the 
populace  as  an  order  of  traitors,  and  it  led,  in 
the  furnace  of  1793,  to  the  great  persecution 
from  the  memories  of  which  the  relations 
between  the  French  democracj''  and  the 
Church  have  not  recovered. 

It  is  important  to  trace  the  actual  steps 
of  the  failure;  for  when  we  appreciate  what 
the  dates  were,  how  short  the  time  which 
was  left  for  judgment  or  for  revision,  and  how 
immediately  disaster  followed  upon  error,  we 
can  understand  what  followed  and  we  can 
understand  it  in  no  other  way. 


240    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

If  we  find  an  enduring  quarrel  between  two 
families  whose  cause  of  contention  we  cannot 
seize  and  whose  mutual  hostility  we  find 
unreasonable,  to  learn  that  it  proceeded  from 
a  cataclysm  too  rapid  and  too  violent  for 
either  to  have  exercised  judgment  upon  it 
will  enable  us  to  excuse  or  at  least  to  com- 
prehend the  endurance  of  their  antagonism. 
Now,  it  was  a  cataclysm  which  fell  upon  the 
relations  of  the  Church  and  State  immediately 
after  the  error  which  the  Parliament  had 
committed;  a  cataclysm  quite  out  of  propor- 
tion to  their  intentions,  as  indeed  are  most 
sudden  disasters  quite  out  of  proportion  to 
the  forces  that  bring  them   about. 

It  was,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  summer  of 
1790— upon  the  12th  of  July— that  the  Civil 
Constitution  of  the  Clergy  was  approved  by 
the  Assembly.  But  it  was  not  until  the 
26th  of  August  that  the  King  consented  to 
sign.  Nor  was  there  at  the  moment  any 
attempt  to  give  the  law  effect.  The  protests 
of  the  bishops,  for  instance,  came  out  quite 
at  leisure,  in  the  month  of  October,  and  the 
active  principle  of  the  whole  of  the  Civil 
Constitution — to  wit,  the  presentation  of  the 
Civic  Oath  which  the  clergy  were  required  to 
take,  was  not  even  debated  until  the  end  of 
the  year. 

This  Civic  Oath,  which  is  sometimes  used  as 
a  bugbear  in  the  matter,  was  no  more  than  an 
engagement  under  the  sanction  of  an  oath  that 
the  bishop  or  priest  taking  it  would  maintain 
the  new  regime — though  that  rdgime  included 
the  constitution  of  the  clergy;  the  oath  involved 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        241 

no  direct  breach  with  Catholic  doctrine  or 
practice.  It  was,  indeed,  a  folly  to  impose  it, 
and  it  was  a  folly  based  upon  the  ignorance 
of  the  politicians  (and  of  many  of  the  bishops 
of  the  day)  as  to  the  nature  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  But  the  oath  was  not,  nor  was  it 
intended  to  be,  a  measure  of  persecution. 
Many  of  the  parish  clergy  took  it,  and  most  of 
them  probably  took  it  in  good  faith  :  nor  did 
it  discredit  the  oath  with  the  public  that  it 
was  refused  by  all  save  four  of  the  acting 
bishops,  for  the  condition  of  the  hierarchy 
in  pre-revolutionary  France  was  notorious. 
The  action  of  the  bishops  appeared  in  the 
public  eye  to  be  purely  political,  and  the  ready 
acceptance  of  the  oath  by  so  many,  though  a 
minority,  of  the  lower  clergy  argued  strongly 
in  its  favour. 

Nevertheless,  no  Catholic  priest  or  bishop 
or  layman  could  take  that  oath  without 
landing  himself  in  disloyalty  to  his  religion; 
and  that  for  the  same  reason  which  led 
St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury  to  make  his  curious 
and  fruitful  stand  against  the  reasonable 
and  inevitable,  as  much  as  against  the  un- 
reasonable, governmental  provisions  of  his 
time.  The  Catholic  Church  is  an  institution 
of  necessity  autonomous.  It  cannot  admit 
the  right  of  any  other  power  exterior  to  its 
own  organisation  to  impose  upon  it  a  modifi- 
cation of  its  discipline,  nor,  above  all,  a  new 
conception  of  its  hieratic  organisation. 

The  reader  must  carefully  distinguish  be- 
tween the  acceptation  by  the  Church  of  a 
detail   of   economic   reform,   the   consent   to 


242    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

suppress  a  corporation  at  the  request  of  the 
civil  power,  or  even  to  forego  certain  tradi- 
tional political  rights,  and  the  admission  of 
the  general  principle  of  civil  control.  To 
that  general  principle  the  Assembly,  in  fram- 
ing the  Constitution  of  the  Clergy,  was  quite 
evidently  committed.  To  admit  such  a  co- 
ordinate external  and  civil  power,  or  rather 
to  admit  a  superior  external  power,  is  in 
theory  to  deny  the  principle  of  Catholicism, 
and  in  practice  to  make  of  the  Catholic 
Church  what  the  other  State  religions  of 
Christendom  have   become. 

I  have  said  that  not  until  the  end  of  the 
year  1790  was  the  debate  opened  upon  the 
proposition  to  compel  the  clergy  to  take  the 
oath. 

It  is  a  singular  commentary  upon  the  whole 
affair  that  compulsion  should  have  been  the 
subject  for  debate  at  all.  It  should  have 
followed,  one  would  have  imagined,  normally 
from  the  law.  But  so  exceptional  had  been 
the  action  of  the  Assembly  and,  as  they  now 
were  beginning  to  find,  so  perilous,  that  a 
special  decree  was  necessary — and  the  King's 
signature  to  it — before  this  normal  conse- 
quence of  a  measure  which  had  been  law  for 
months,  could  be  acted  upon. 

Here  let  the  reader  pause  and  consider 
with  what  that  moment — ^the  end  of  1790 — 
coincided. 

The  assignats,  paper-money  issued  upon 
the  security  of  the  confiscated  estates  of  the 
Church,  had  already  depreciated  10  per  cent. 
Those  who  had  first  accepted  them  were  paying 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        243 

throughout  France  a  penny  in  the  livre,  or 
as  we  may  put  it,  a  penny  farthing  on  the 
shilling,  for  what  must  have  seemed  to  most 
of  them  the  obstinacy  of  one  single  corpora- 
tion— and  that  an  unpopular  one — against 
the  decrees  of  the  National  Assembly. 

It  was  now  the  moment  when  a  definite 
reaction  against  the  Revolution  was  first 
taking  shape,  and  when  the  populace  was 
first  beginning  uneasily  to  have  suspicion  of 
it;  it  was  the  moment  when  the  Court  was 
beginning  to  negotiate  for  flight;  it  was  the 
moment  when  (though  the  populace  did  not 
know  it)  Mirabeau  was  advising  the  King 
with  all  his  might  to  seize  upon  the  enforce- 
ment of  the  priests'  oath  as  an  opportunity 
for  civil  war. 

The  whole  air  of  that  winter  was  charged 
with  doubt  and  mystery  :  in  the  minds  of  all 
who  had  enthusiastically  followed  the  march 
of  the  Revolution,  the  short  days  of  that 
rigorous  cold  of  1790-91  contained  passages 
of  despair,  and  a  very  brief  period  was  to 
suffice  for  making  the  clerical  oath  not  only 
the  test  of  democracy  against  reaction,  but 
the  wedge  that  should  split  the  nation  in  two. 

With  the  very  opening  of  the  new  year,  on 
the  4th  of  January,  the  bishops  and  priests 
in  the  Assembly  were  summoned  to  take  the 
oath  to  the  Kjng,  the  Nation,  and  the  Law; 
but  that  law  included  the  Civil  Constitution 
of  the  Clergy,  and  they  refused.  Within 
three  months  Mirabeau  was  dead,  the  flight 
of  the  King  determined  on,  the  suspicion  of 
Paris  at  white  heat,  the  oath  taken  or  refused 


244    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

throughout  France,  and  the  schismatic  priests 
introduced  into  their  parishes — it  may  be 
imagined  with  what  a  clamour  and  with  how 
many  village  quarrels  !  In  that  same  fort- 
night appeared  the  papal  brief,  long  delayed, 
and  known  as  the  Brief  *'  Caritas,^^  denouncing 
the  Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy.  Six 
weeks  later,  at  the  end  of  May,  the  papal 
representative  at  the  French  Court  was  with- 
drawn, and  in  that  act  religious  war  declared. 

Throughout  this  quarrel,  which  was  now 
exactly  of  a  year's  duration,  but  the  acute 
phase  of  which  had  lasted  only  six  months, 
every  act  of  either  party  to  it  necessarily 
tended  to  make  the  conflict  more  violent. 
Not  only  was  there  no  opportunity  for  con- 
ciliation, but  in  the  very  nature  of  things  the 
most  moderate  counsel  had  to  range  itself 
on  one  side  or  the  other,  and  every  public 
act  which  touched  in  any  way  upon  the  sore 
point,  though  it  touched  but  indirectly,  and 
with  no  desire  on  the  part  of  the  actors  to 
rouse  the  passions  of  the  moment,  immedi- 
ately appeared  as  a  provocation  upon  one 
side  or  the  other. 

It  was  inevitable  that  it  should  be  so, 
with  a  population  which  had  abandoned  the 
practice  of  religion,  with  the  attachment  of 
the  clerical  organisation  to  the  organisation 
of  the  old  regime,  with  the  strict  bond  of 
discipline  that  united  the  priesthood  of  the 
Church  in  France  into  one  whole,  and  above 
all  with  the  necessity  under  which  the  Revolu- 
tion was,  at  this  stage,  of  finding  a  definite 
and  tangible   enemy 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        245 

This  last  point  is  of  the  very  first  import- 
ance. PubHc  opinion  was  exasperated  and 
inflamed,  for  the  King  was  known  to  be  an 
opponent  of  the  democratic  movement ;  yet 
he  signed  the  bills  and  could  not  be  overtly 
attacked.  The  Queen  was  known  to  be  a 
violent  opponent  of  it ;  but  she  did  not 
actually  govern.  The  Governments  of  Europe 
were  known  to  be  opponents ;  but  no  diplo- 
matic note  had  yet  appeared  of  which  public 
opinion  could  make  an  object  for  attack. 

The  resistance,  therefore,  offered  by  the 
clergy  to  the  Civil  Constitution,  had  just 
that  effect  which  a  nucleus  will  have  in  the 
crystallisation  of  some  solution.  It  polarised 
the  energies  of  the  Revolution,  it  provided 
a  definite  foil,  a  definite  negative,  a  definite 
counterpoint,  a  definite  butt.  Here  was  a 
simple  issue.  Men  wearing  a  special  uniform, 
pursuing  known  functions,  performing  a 
known  part  in  society — to  wit,  the  priests — 
were  now  for  the  most  part  the  enemies  of  the 
new  democratic  Constitution  that  was  in  pre- 
paration. They  would  not  take  the  oath  of 
loyalty  to  it :  they  were  everywhere  in  secret 
rebellion  against  it  and,  where  they  were  dis- 
possessed of  their  cures,  in  open  rebellion. 
The  clergy,  therefore,  that  is  the  non-juring 
clergy  (and  the  conforming  clergy  were  an 
experiment  that  soon  became  a  fiction),  were 
after  April  1791,  in  the  eyes  of  all  the  demo- 
crats of  the  time,  the  plainest  and  most 
tangible  form  of  the  opposition  to  democracy. 

To  the  way  in  which  I  have  presented  the 
problem  a  great  deal  more  might  be  added. 


246    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

The  very  fact  that  the  democratic  move- 
ment had  come  after  a  period  of  unfaith,  and 
was  non-Catholic  in  its  springs,  would  have 
tended  to  produce  that  quarrel.  So  would 
the  necessary  attachment  of  the  Catholic  to 
authority  and  the  easy  confusion  between 
the  principle  of  authority  and  claims  of  a 
traditional  monarchy.  Again,  the  elements 
of  vanity,  of  material  greed,  and  of  a  false 
finality  which  are  to  be  discovered  in  any 
purely  democratic  theory  of  the  State,  will 
between  them  always  bring  this  theory  into 
some  conflict  with  religion.  The  centuries 
during  which  the  throne  and  the  altar  had 
stood  as  twin  symbols,  especially  in  France, 
the  very  terminology  of  religious  metaphor 
which  had  been  forged  during  the  centuries 
of  monarchical  institutions  in  Europe,  helped 
to  found  the  great  quarrel.  But,  I  repeat, 
the  overt  act  without  which  the  quarrel  could 
never  have  become  the  terribly  great  thing 
it  did,  the  master  blunder  which  destroyed  the 
unity  of  the  revolutionary  movement,  was 
the  Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy. 

So  much  for  the  first  year  of  the  schism. 
May  1790  to  May  1791.  The  second  year  is 
but  an  intensification  of  the  process  apparent 
in  the  first. 

It  opens  with  the  King's  flight  in  June  1791 : 
that  is,  with  the  first  open  act  of  enmity  taken 
against  the  authority  of  the  National  Parlia- 
ment since,  two  years  before,  the  National 
Parliament  had  declared  itself  supreme. 
Already  the  Court  had  been  generally  identi- 
fied with  the  resistance  of  the  clergy,  and  a 


THE   CATHOLIC  CHURCH        247 

particular  example  of  this  had  appeared  in 
the  opinion  that  the  King's  attempted  journey 
to  St.  Cloud  in  April  had  been  prompted  by 
a  desire  to  have  communion  at  the  hands 
of  a  non-juring  priest.^  When,  therefore, 
the  King  filed,  though  his  flight  had  nothing 
whatsoever  to  do  with  the  clerical  quarrel, 
it  was  associated  in  men's  minds  with  the 
clerical  quarrel  through  his  attempt  to  leave 
Paris  in  April  and  from  a  long  association  of 
the  Court  with  the  clerical  resistance.  The 
outburst  of  anti-monarchical  feeling  which 
followed  the  flight  was  at  the  same  time 
an  outburst  of  anti-clerical  feeling;  but 
the  clergy  were  everywhere  and  could  be 
attacked  everywhere.  The  Declaration  of 
Pillnitz,  which  the  nation  very  rightly  inter- 
preted as  the  beginning  of  an  armed  Euro- 
pean advance  against  the  French  democracy, 
was  felt  to  be  a  threat  not  only  in  favour  of 
the  King  but  in  favour  also  of  the  rebellious 
ecclesiastics. 

And  so  forth.  The  uneasy  approach  of 
war  throughout  that  autumn  and  winter  of 
1791-92,  the  peculiar  transformation  of  the 

*  This  opinion  has  entered  into  so  many  Protestant  and 
non-Catholic  histories  of  the  Revolution  that  it  is  worth 
criticising  once  again  in  this  little  hook.     The  King  was 

Eerfectly  free  to  receive  communion  privately  from  the 
ands  of  orthodox  priests,  did  so  receive  it_,  and  had 
received  communion  well  within  the  canonical  times. 
There  was  little  ecclesiastical  reason  for  the  attem})ted' 
leaving  of  Paris  for  St.  Cloud  on  Monday  the  18th  April, 
1791,  save  the  custom  (not  the  religious  duty)  of  com- 
municating in  public  on  Easter  Sunday  itself;  it  was  a 
political  move. 


248    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

French  temperament  which  war  or  its  ap- 
proach invariably  produces — a  sort  of  con- 
structive exaltation  and  creative  passion — 
began  to  turn  a  great  part  of  its  energy  or 
fury  against  the  very  persons  of  the  orthodox 
priests. 

The  new  Parliament,  the  "  Legislative  '*  as 
it  was  called,  had  not  been  sitting  two  months 
when  it  passed,  upon  November  29,  1791, 
the  decree  that  non-juring  priests  should  be 
deprived  of  their  stipend.  And  here  again 
we  must  note  the  curious  lack  of  adjustment 
between  law  and  fact  in  all  this  clerical 
quarrel  !  For  more  than  a  year  public 
money  had  been  paid  to  men  who,  under  the 
law,  should  not  during  the  whole  of  that  year 
have  touched  any  salary  !  Yet,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  oath,  special  action  was  necessary, 
and  moreover  the  Parliament  added  to  this 
tardy  and  logical  consequence  of  the  law  a 
declaration  that  those  who  had  not  so  taken 
the  oath  within  eight  days  of  their  decree 
should  be  rendered  ''  suspect." 

The  word  "  suspect  "  is  significant.  The 
Parliament  even  now  could  not  act,  at  least 
it  could  not  act  without  the  King ;  and  this 
word  '*  suspect,"  which  carried  no  material 
consequences  with  it,  was  one  that  might 
cover  a  threat  of  things  worse  than  regular 
and  legal  punishment.  It  was  like  the  mark 
that  some  power  not  authorised  or  legal 
makes  upon  the  door  of  those  v/hom  that 
power  has  singled  out  for  massacre  in  some 
city. 

Three  weeks  later  Louis  vetoed  the  decree 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        249 

refusing  stipends  to  non-jurors,  and  the  year 
1791  ended  with  the  whole  matter  in  suspense 
but  with  exasperation  increasing  to  madness. 

The  first  three  months  of  1792  saw  no 
change.  The  non-juring  clergy  were  still 
tolerated  by  the  Executive  in  their  illegal 
position,  and,  what  is  more  extraordinary, 
still  received  public  money  and  were  still 
for  the  most  part  in  possession  of  their 
cures;  the  conception  that  the  clergy  were 
the  prime,  or  at  any  rate  the  most  obvious, 
enemies  of  the  new  regime  now  hardened 
into  a  fixed  opinion  w^hich  the  attempted  per- 
secution of  religion,  as  the  one  party  called 
it,  the  obstinate  and  anti-national  rebellion 
of  factious  priests,  as  the  other  party  called 
it,  was  rapidly  approaching  real  persecution 
and  real  rebellion. 

With  April  1792  came  the  war,  and  all  the 
passions  of  the  war. 

The  kno\vn  hostility  of  the  King  to  the 
Revolution  was  now  become  something  far 
worse :  his  known  sympathy  with  an  enemy 
under  arms.  To  force  the  King  into  the 
open  was  henceforward  the  main  tactic  of 
the  revolutionary  body. 

Now  for  those  whose  object  was  forcing 
Louis  XVI  to  open  declarations  of  hostility 
against  the  nation,  his  religion  was  an  obvious 
instrument.  In  no  point  could  one  come 
to  closer  grips  with  the  King  than  on  this 
question  of  the  Church,  where  already,  in 
December  1791,  he  had  exercised  his  veto. 

On  May  27,  1792,  therefore,  Guadet  and 
Vergniaud,  the  Girondins,  moved  that  a  priest 


250    THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

who  had  refused  to  take  the  oath  should  be 
subjected  to  transportation  upon  the  mere 
demand  of  any  twenty  taxpayers  within  that 
assembly  of  parishes  known  as  a  "  Canton." 
It  was  almost  exactly  two  years  since  the 
Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy  had  first  been 
reported  to  the  House  by  the  Ecclesiastical 
Committee  of  the  Constituent  or  National 
Assembly. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  under  what 
external  conditions  this  violent  act,  the  first 
true  act  of  persecution,  was  demanded.  It 
was  already  a  month  since,  upon  the  20th  of 
April,  the  war  had  opened  upon  the  Belgian 
frontier  by  a  disgraceful  panic  and  thfl 
murder  of  General  Dillon;  almost  contem- 
poraneous with  that  breakdown  was  the 
corresponding  panic  and  flight  of  the  French 
troops  in  their  advance  to  Mons.  All  Europe 
was  talking  of  the  facile  march  upon  Paris 
which  could  now  be  undertaken ;  and  in 
general  this  decree  against  the  priests  was 
but  part  of  the  exasperated  policy  which  was 
rising  to  meet  the  terror  of  the  invasion. 

It  was  followed,  of  course,  by  the  decree 
dismissing  the  Royal  Guard,  and,  rather  more 
than  a  week  later,  by  the  demand  for  the 
formation  of  a  camp  of  volunteers  under  the 
walls  of  Paris.  But  with  this  we  are  not  here 
concerned.  The  King  vetoed  the  decree 
against  the  non-juring  priests,  and  in  the 
wild  two  months  that  followed  the  orthodox 
clergy  were,  in  the  mind  of  the  populace,  and 
particularly  the  populace  of  Paris,  identified 
with  the  cause  of  the  re-establishment  of  the 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        251 

old  regime  and  the  success  of  the  invading 
foreign  armies. 

With  the  crash  of  the  10th  of  August 
the  persecution  began  :  the  true  persecution, 
which  was  to  the  growing  bitterness  of  the 
previous  two  years  what  a  blow  is  to  the 
opening  words  of  a  quarrel. 

The  decree  of  the  27th  of  May  was  put 
into  force  within  eleven  days  of  the  fall  of 
the  Tuileries.  True,  it  was  not  put  into 
force  in  that  crudity  which  the  Parliament 
had  demanded  :  the  non-juring  priests  were 
given  a  fortnight  to  leave  the  kingdom,  and 
if  they  failed  to  avail  themselves  of  the  delay 
were  to  be  transported. 

From  this  date  to  the  end  of  the  Terror, 
twenty-three  months  later,  the  story  of  the 
relations  between  the  Revolution  and  the 
Church,  though  wild  and  terrible,  is  simple  : 
it  is  a  story  of  mere  persecution  culminating 
in  extremes  of  cruelty  and  in  the  supposed 
uprooting   of   Cln-istianity  in   France. 

The  orthodox  clergy  were  everywhere  re- 
garded by  this  time  as  the  typical  enemies 
of  the  revolutionary  movement ;  they  them- 
selves regarded  the  revolutionary  movement, 
by  this  time,  as  being  principally  an  attempt 
to  destroy  the  Catholic  Church. 

Within  seven  months  of  the  fall  of  the 
monarchy,  from  the  18th  of  March,  1793, 
the  priests,  whether  non-juring  or  schismatic, 
might,  on  the  denunciation  of  any  six  citizens, 
be  subjected  to  transportation. 

There  followed  immediately  a  general 
attack  upon  religion.     The  attempted  closing 


252    THE   FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

of  all  churches  was,  of  course,  a  failure,  but 
it  was  firmly  believed  that  such  attachment 
as  yet  remained  to  the  Catholic  Church  was 
due  only  to  the  ignorance  of  the  provincial 
districts  which  displayed  it,  or  to  the  self- 
seeking  of  those  who  fostered  it.  The 
attempt  at  mere  "  de-christianisation,'*  as  it 
was  called,  failed,  but  the  months  of  terror 
and  cruelty,  the  vast  number  of  martyrdoms 
(for  they  were  no  less)  and  the  incredible 
sufferings  and  indignities  to  which  the  priests 
who  attempted  to  remain  in  the  country  were 
subjected,  burnt  itself,  as  it  were,  into  the 
very  fibre  of  the  Catholic  organisation  in 
France,  and  remained,  in  spite  of  political 
theory  one  way  or  the  other,  and  in  spite  of 
the  national  sympathies  of  the  priesthood, 
the  one  great  active  memory  inherited  from 
that  time. 

Conversely,  the  picture  of  the  priest,  his 
habit  and  character,  as  the  fatal  and  neces- 
sary opponent  of  the  revolutionary  theory, 
became  so  fixed  in  the  mind  of  the  Republican 
that  two  generations  did  nothing  to  eliminate 
it,  and  that  even  in  our  time  the  older  men, 
in  spite  of  pure  theory,  cannot  rid  themselves 
of  an  imagined  connection  between  the 
Catholic  Church  and  an  international  con- 
spiracy against  democracy.  Nor  does  this 
non-rational  but  very  real  feeling  lack  sup- 
port from  the  utterances  of  those  who,  in 
opposing  the  political  theory  of  the  French 
Revolution,  consistently  quote  the  Catholic 
Church  as  its  necessary  and  holy  antagonist. 

The  attempt  to  ''  de-christianise  'i  France 


THE   CATHOLIC   CHURCH        253 

failed,  as  I  have  said,  completely.  Public 
worship  was  restored,  and  the  Concordat  of 
Napoleon  was  believed  to  have  settled  the 
relations  between  Church  and  State  in  a  per- 
manent fashion.  We  have  lived  to  see  it 
dissolved;  but  this  generation  will  not  see, 
nor  perhaps  the  generation  succeeding  it,  the 
issue  of  the  struggle  between  two  bodies  of 
thought  which  are  divided  by  no  process  of 
reason,  but  profoundly  divorced  by  the  action 
of  vivid  and  tragic  historical  naemories. 


INDEX 


Alexander  the  Great,  144 
Argonne,  the,  156 
Arras,  132,  187 
Artois,  Cointe  d',  105 
Avignon,  111 

Bacbarach,  173 

Bailly,  71,  95 

Barentin,  89 

JBan-ere,  80,  125,  130,  131 

Bastille,  the,  95,  105,  109,  115 

Beauregard,  200 

Belgium,  123,  167,  169,  173 

Bergues,  191 

Bordeaux,  135 

Bouill^,  107,  152 

Brissot,  110,  130 

Brunswick,  Duke  of,  115,  118,  178 

Brussels,  168 

Cajsar,  144 

Calonne,  4G 

Cambou,  125 

Carignan,  200 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  68 

Garnot,  72-74,  80,  81,  136,  139,  171, 

184,  186,  195,  197,  198,  200,  201 
Cassel,  192 
Chalons,  107,  158 
Champ-de-Mars,  Massacre  of,  109 
Champfiexiry,  77 
Charlcroi,  210,  211 
Charles  I  of  England,  222 
Chollet,  128 
Clerfayt,  20(5,  207,  209 
Coblentz,  115 
Coburg,  170,  173,  176,  177,  179,  186, 

188,  196,  210 
CA)mmittce  of  Public  Safety,  78,  79, 

80,  81,  119,  125,  126,  128,  129,  131, 

134, 136, 137, 140, 183,  195,  196,  203 
Conde,  106 
Cond6,  fortress   of,  135,  173,    177, 

178,  180,  182,  183,  186,  195 
Condorcet,  71 
Contrat  Social,  21,  31,  82,  33,  34,  35, 

37,  126,  133 
Coudequerque,  192 
Couthon,  131 
Custine,  177,  178,  179,  180 

Danton,  64,  67-72,  73,  81,  82,  100, 
117,  119,  120,  125,  130,  131,  135, 
137,  138,  139,  150,  162,  184,  185 

Desmoulins,  138 

Dillon,  General,  250 

Drouet,  108 


Dumouriez,  43,  65-67,  113,  123,  124, 
125,  155,  157,  158,  159,  162,  163, 
105,  168,  169,  170,  173 

Dunquerque.  135, 136,  181,  185,  ISfi, 
18S,  189,  190,  191,  192,  195 

England,  14,  124,  145 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  England,  239 

Esquelbecque,  191 

Fersen,  Count  Axel  de,  53 
Fleurus,  211,  212 
Fontenay,  128 
Fontenoy,  149,  166 
Fouch6,  74 
Freemasonry,  71,  231 
Freyta^,  190,  191,  192,  193,  194 
Furnes,  190,  194 

George  III  of  England,  63 

Gironde,  110 

Girondins,  Th^,   110,   112,  119,    122, 

123,  129,  249 
Grandpr6,  158 
Quadet,  249 
Guise,  198,  200 

Hagucnau,  202 

Haiue,  the  River,  167 

Hubert  138 

Henry  VlII  of  England,  222,  229, 

239 
Ilesse-Cassel,  Landgrave  of,  113 
Hoche,  202 
Holland,  124,  163 

Hoondschoote,  74,  136,  195,  196,  197 
Houchard,  179,  181,  192,  193,   194, 

195,  198 
Howe,  Lord,  213 

Ireland,  239 
Isnard,  110 

James  II  of  Engrland,  230 
Jefferson,  21 
Jemappcs,  123,  166,  167 
Joseph  II  of  Austria,  112,  163, 165 
Jourdan,  198 

Kaiserslautem,  202 
Kaunitz,  155 
Kellermann,  159,  160 
KHmaine,  180, 181 

La  Fayette,  43,  51,  61-65,  95,  100, 

109, 114 
Lamballe,  Princess  de,  53,  71 
landau,  177,  202,  203 
Lebas,  141 
Leipsic,  143,  214 


255 


256 


INDEX 


Lequesnoy,  177,  186, 195 

Linsellea,  189 

Longwy,  115,  118,  156 

Lorraine,  118 

Louis  XIV  of  France,  100,  225,  230 

Louis  XVI  of  Franco,  vi,  37-45,  71, 
84,  86,  87,  88,  89,  90,  91,  92,  93,  95, 
99,  100,  101,  102,  103,  104,  105, 
107,  KJ8,  109,  111,  114,  117,  123, 
124,  152,  153,  243,  245,  246,  247, 
243,  2^9, 250 

Louia  XVII  of  France,  135 

Louvre,  the,  116,  117 

Luxembourg,  118 

Lyons,  129,  136,  182,  188 

Lys,  the  River,  206,  207 

Machecoul,  128 
Maestrieht,  168 
Malo-les-Baiiis,  194 
Marat,  74-77, 120,  135,  188 
Marcel,  120 
Marchionnes,  189 

Marie  Antoinotle,  Qnepn  of  France, 
▼i,  45-53,  «3,  04,  90,  99,  100,  101, 

102,  103,  106,  107,  108,  109,  113, 
116,  117,  133,  139,  152,  153,  155, 
245 

Marque,  the  River,  206 
••  Marseillaise,"  the,  116 
Marseilles,  116,  131,  135,  182 
Maubeuge,  136,  177,  178,  181,  198, 

197,  202 
Mayence,  135,  173,  177,  178 
Merda,  142 
Metz,  159 
Michelet,  68 
Mirabeau,  44,  58-61,  64,  70,  72,  102, 

103,  104,  im,  107,  243 
Mons,  167,  177,  250 
Montra^dy,  107 
Mouveau,  206 

Namur,  179 

Nantes,  128,  131,  136,  137,  182 

Napoleon   I,   66,   07,    72,   143,   150, 

205,  214,  258 
Narbonne,  43,  155 
Neckor,  46,  90,  94,  95 
Neerwlndou,  124,  125,  128,  169 

Orleans,  128 
Orleans,  Duke  of,  109 

Parthenay,  128 
Pichegru,  202 
Pillnitz,  154,  247 
Poland,  31 

Polignac,  Madame  de,  53 
Pollio,  220 


Redange,  118 

Robespierre,    77-83,   111,   112,   132, 

133,  134,  140,  141,  142,  213 
Ro^inet,  Dr.,  120 
Roland,  110 
Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  20,  21,  27, 

28,  29,  30,  31,  32,  33,  3-1,  35,  36,  37, 

125 
Russia,  14 

St.  Amand,  206 

Saint- Andr6,  Jeanbon,  80,  131,  185 

St.  Cloud,  108,  247 

Saint-Just,  80,  131,   133,   140,   lil 

210 
St.  Menehould,  159 
Scheldt,  the,  123,  183,  205,  206 
Sedan,  114 
Servia,  155 
Sioyes,  87 
Spain,  24,  44,  124,  150 

Talavern,  189 

Talleyrand,  150 

Terror,  the,  79,  80,  81,  82,  120,  137, 

139,  140,  142,  251 
Tetteghcra,  191 
niouars,  128 

Toulon,  135,  136,  182,  183,  203 
Tourcoing,  189,  206,  208,  209 
Toum.-iy,  210 
Trafalgar,  213 
Tuilcrics,  the,  100, 101, 116,  121,  251 

Valenciennes,    129,    135,    169,    173, 

177,  178,  179,  180,  181,  182,   183, 

186,  195 
Valmy,  121,  122,  131,  158,  169,  160, 

169 
Varennes,  107, 108, 154 
Vendee,  128,  135,  203 
Verdun,  118,  120,  156,  157 
Vergniaud,  110,  130,  249 
Versailles,  52,  94,  99,  100,  102,  162, 

153 
Vienna,  163,  210 

Warcoing,  205 
Waterloo,  143 

Wattignies,  73,  136,  201,  208 
WeUington,  Duke  of,  189 
Westermann,  131 
Wilder,  191 
Wissombourg,  202 
Wormhoudt,  191 
Wurmser,  178 

York,  Duke  of,  179,  181,  18G,  183, 
189,  190,  191,  192,  194,  205,  203, 
209 


Richard  Clay  <fe  Sons,  Limited,  London  and  Bungay. 


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